


The Mistress Who Mounts the World

by Samarkand12



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-02-07 03:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 27,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12832236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samarkand12/pseuds/Samarkand12
Summary: When things go awry, a Heterodyne Heir is thrust into dire circumstances in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.  Heterodynes never do anything "small", especially when they are given cause to grind a very big axe.It is several years later when a cocksure Princeling of Dorne is brought before the dreaded Khaleesi Hetrokdinh.





	1. Okay, fine, bathe him and bring him to my yurt

A sort of intentional WIP to be added to whenever my whims dictate. Pure crack. No deep plots meant. Everything is Agatha careening around like a wrecking ball on ASOIAF canon.  
  
Date of first POV is 279AC. Agatha is 22, having been on Planetos since she was 18.  
  
++++  
  
Oberyn Martell marched as proudly as any of the house of Nymeros Martell could when clad only in oiled skin and a leather loincloth.  
  
Why should he not? Oberyn was not a man prone to false modesty. Or, really, any modesty at all. By the gods old and new, he looked absolutely _fabulous_ as the _khaleesi_ 's bloodriders lead him leashed by a leather thong around his neck. The lambent glow of Myr burning to the ground a league away picked out the definition of his muscles in just the right way. One of the bloodriders couldn't help giving his backside--you could bounce a stag off it--a considered appraisal.. He offered the female warrior an arch look. Tattooed and fanged, the seven-foot tall monstrosity created by the _khaleesi_ 's sorcery flushed a deep violet. Of course she would. He might be captive of a madwoman who was busy reducing the Three Daughters and Volantis to ash as she had done to the cities of Slaver's Bay. But as always, he was stunning no matter what the circumstances.  
  
Odd that he should be treated so. The _Khaleesi Hetrokdinh_ had Views on the practice of slavery. Said views were why the now-freed Myrish slaves were dancing with joy at their newfound freedom. The tattoo-brands and collars that had marked them had been removed at the Hetrokdinh's command. Oberyn had heard that the slave-artisans who made up so many of those in Myr had willingly joined her _khlasar_ under the elevated status of _minyan_. More would be granted lands to farm or places in the newly-rising towns in the now Not-At-All-Disputed Lands. Peace had come to the eternal battleground where free companies such as Oberyn's had plied their trade since the Century of Blood. Now it was claimed as sovereign territory by the Hetrokdinh.  
  
Oberyn eyed the Dothraki who formed the core of the Hetrokdinh's khalasar. These were no savages from the grass sea far to the east. The Hetrokdinh's _yaegar_ cavalry wore the distinctive brigandines created by their mistress: spidersilk strong enough to serve as the equivalent of mail, with plates of a steel alloy that rivaled Valyrian steel for lightness and strength between the inner and outer layers. Their bows were cunning mechanical marvels of steel and pulleys and braided-wire bowstrings that could spit a knight in full plate at three hundred yards. Arrayed in disciplined ranks were her foot--the lockstep legions of Ghis reborn, clad in bastard plate and bearing pike and crossbow. Many bore the stitching of those who had been revived when falling in battle.  
  
Looming above them was a Harrenhal of felt and silk. Although it was not truly as great as that grim pile of stone in the riverlands. It was closer in size to Rivverun if he was any judge. It was vaster than anything that should be called a tent. Thirty feet high it loomed, its roof sprouting chimneys and gargoyles and weathervanes. The number of the latter was ridiculous. Oberyn wondered if the _khaleesi_ 's rumoured depraved sexual tastes involved them. Certain parts of him clenche--not pleasantly--at the thought of her bringing the spiked contraptions into play. He had no doubt why he had been selected, bathed, and dis-dressed in such a fetching outfit. The _khaleesi_ desired a stallion tonight.  
  
The entrance to the _Yurt Hetrokdinh_ were bronze over ironwood imported from the north. The plates of bronze depicted the _khaleesi_ 's life: from her time in Myr as a pillow-slave, to her gifting to a bloodrider of a khal, to the brutal slaughter of her rapists on the ride to Vaes Dothrak. Even Oberyn's gorge rose a bit at the... _details_ of her revenge against the slavers she had encountered in her rise as the first woman to command the allegiance of the Dothraki. With an ominous groan, the gates opened to admit the party escorting the Hetrokdinh's bed-toy-to-be into her lair. Oberyn admired the theatrics. They were so important. He himself practiced variations on "beware the bite of the viper" to ensure that his signature catchphrase was appropriate for all occasions.  
  
Oberyn's composure broke as he beheld what was within the Great Yurt of the Khlaeesi. Gods be good, not even the Hall of a Hundred Hearths at Harrenhal could compare. An open structure of dynesteel that could collapse itself for transport bore several floors of...well, he wasn't sure. It was part palace, part smithy, and part alchemist's guildhall. His jaw dropped in a most unbecoming fashion as he was lead up a central way to what had to be the throne room. The butts of the lances of the bloodriders prodded him forward towards a great throne of skulls welded to a dynesteel frame of grotesque make. Lounging upon it was--  
  
His loincloth became suddenly confining as his knees buckled.  
  
Astonishing. Beautiful. She was Tywin Lannister with teats. Her lusciously-curved form was blessed with muscles worthy of the Smith. It was clad in spidersilk and dynesteel plate, with a leather dress slit up both sides to reveal legs clad in ringmail hose and thigh-high leather boots. Green eyes stared imperiously down at him. The slight flaw of a cowlick sprouting up from the front of her head enhanced rather than detracted. It was a human touch to a woman who was half-a-god.  
  
She cocked her head.  
  
"Do I have to say it?" the _khaleesi_ Aga-ta the Hetrokdinh muttered. "And I hate this skull throne. It has no lumbar support!"  
  
"Mistress," whispered a voice in the air. "Please. Just this once?"  
  
"Oh, alright, Kestle," Aga-ta said, with a wry look. "Just for you."  
  
She inhaled.  
  
" ** _COWER BEFORE ME, WORM! FOR YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE BATHED AND TAKEN TO MY TENT! AHAHAHAHA!_** "  
  
"YES! A WONDERFUL RENDITION, MISTRESS! Euphronsynia could not have done better."  
  
"Right." Aga-ta sighed. "Hey, you there...um...name?"  
  
"I am Oberyn Martell," he managed, steeling himself to act nonchalant. "And you had best beware the bite of a prince of Dorne. For you never know when the viper may strike."  
  
One golden eyebrow rose.  
  
" _Ooooo. This one might prove...interesting. Are you the one who at the Citadel wrote that dissertation on weirwood and its similarities to human nervous tissue?"_  
  
"Er." Oberyn paused. "Yes? I thought they had that suppressed."  
  
" _You would be surprised at how little that really matters. Would you like some coffee?_ "  
  
Oberyn's nostrils flared at the heavenly, bitter scent coming from the eldritch contraption of copper and steel that wheeled itself into view.  
  
It smelled...perfect.  
  
Oberyn looked into the madness that had consumed the _khaleesi_ 's features.  
  
He smiled in just the right way to make his teeth go "ting!" in the firelight.  
  
"It would be my pleasure," Oberyn purred.


	2. At least he got a bath out of it

Oberyn Martell allowed that he had one flaw in the magnificence that was him. He grew bored too easily. All the knowledge of the Citadel laid out before him? Ennui had set in after he had forged six links. The fleshpots of Lys had fascinated him for longer. Yet even then, he had grown tired of the endless debaucheries of the City of Pleasure. So it had been off to wilder adventures in the east seeking new experiences. The studies of alchemy and the sorcerus arts had no lost their charms. Yet cozening eldritch mysteries out of their tight-lipped practitioners was so exhausting. So he had signed on to the Second Sons to satisfy his lust for battle. Certain disagreements and a duel over a camp follower had lead him to break off from that free company to form the Viper's Fangs. He had signed on with the Triarchy reborn to battle the _khaleesi_ 's khalasar after the Fall of Volantis.  
  
It had been a most disagreeable yet instructive experience to have gotten himself thoroughly thrashed in the campaign.  
  
None of these experiences matched what he had endured this night. His entire world had been shattered. All the certainties had been annihilated. He had fell screaming as a newborn babe as he was subjected to fiendish alchemies of thought. Oberyn Martell had been thoroughly ravished. And that had just been the dinner conversation. Gods be damned, the marvels he had seen as she had conducted him through her workshops. He had wept as she had played upon the instrument she called the Silverlodeon an excerpt of a monumental performance piece she had composed based on _Nymeria's Thousand Ships._ The first performance of the "opera" was planned for next year in Braavos's lagoon once they had the galleys built.   
  
She had been strangely coy when he had kissed her hand. It had almost had been as if she were a maiden. But he was Oberyn Martell. Matters had furthered themselves as they always did. Oberyn did not consider himself a brute. There had been a hesitancy her responses. He had been mindful that she had not been willing when serving in that Lyseni pillow-house. Yet she had proven herself more than enthusiastic when respect was given. Not to mention retaining all the skills the Lyseni trainers had instilled in her. Said skills benefited immensely from a deep understanding of anatomy and the human nervous system. The devices she had crafted in between tilts in the lists of love had had their own appeal.  
  
Oberyn sank deeper into the tub until his nose was just above the surface. He lolled in the great copper monstrosity in the manner of a lizard-lion. The bathtub was as big as one of the larger pools in the Water Gardens. Great bronze dragon's heads curled over the edge to allow one to bathe beneath a deluge. Within the tub itself were tiny openings which projected jets of water just to to massage aching muscles. Dozens of them were playing over the bruises left by the _khaleesi_ 's ministrations. Water was constantly heated in a device from whose furnace glowed the tell-tale sickly green of wildfire. One of the animated statues that Agatha called "clanks"--a small and amusingly impertinent brass-and-steel squid--held a slender glass of liqueur in one tentacle. Oberyn managed to lift one hand high enough to tip it to his lips.  
  
"Congratulations, prince," whispered a voice next to his ear. "I do believe you had passed the job interview."  
  
"I thought it unlikely it was pure happenstance I was chosen," Oberyn drawled. "So shall my fate be a pretty collar and a revealing leather loincloth? I warn you, as amusing as tonight's diversions, a viper has ways of slithering free of cages."  
  
"Wonderful! I haven't had a decent test of the death traps since that incident with the Faceless Man," the voice said, chuckling nastily.   
  
"What shall I call you, spirit?" Oberyn smacked his lips. "Or are you demon? Perhaps a form of overly-talkative clank, woven in silk?"  
  
"I am Castle Heterodyne," the voice replied. "The main part of me remains in Mechanicsburg, in the castle of her ancestors. I was born of a fragment cast here centuries ago by one of my master's experiments in temporal manipulation. She found me in Vaes Dothrak, where the clank I was in had been mistaken for a statue."  
  
"You were crafted then," Oberyn said. "It must be rather a disappointment, to fall from a holdfast in stone to a mere tent."  
  
"It's my dream come true, to be a yurt!" the Castle crowed. "To travel across the world, meet fascinating peoples, and watch the Mistress brutally slaughter them."  
  
"Her armies were gracious in accepting my surrender," Oberyn said, wincing at the memory of that humiliation. "From tales of her, I half-thought myself about to subjected to hideous torments."  
  
"The night is young," the Castle said. "Although yes, apparently there was a terrible outbreak of heroism in the family while I was away. Tch. Still, she is a Heterodyne. The blood will out."  
  
"Considerable fountains of it." Oberyn sat up. "So, this position I seem to have been volunteered for. I notice she has no children."  
  
"Yes. You were the subject of an agreement between my Heterodyne and myself," the Castle admitted. "Even in exile, the family line must continue. My mistress agreed to accept the first candidate presented to her who proved...agreeable. It is past time for heirs."  
  
"Why do you not simply take my seed and craft a babe from it?" Oberyn asked.  
  
"Well, really." The Castle sniffed. "That is so sterile. No sense of romance. Speaking of which, prince, up you go. We need to fill those little iron cages with bundles of joy."  
  
Iron cages?  
  
Oberyn saw the fins slicing towards him. He gracefully escaped the tub before the iron toothed sharks had him for dinner. At which point he discovered that the Great Yurt of the Heterodyne was, in fact, very well equipped with all manner of death traps. Naked as a man escaping an enraged husband, Oberyn dodged showers of darts and swinging blades. He had some trouble with the carnivorous mechanical ducks. Fending off the grasping vines was an amusing challenge. It was quite an invigorating and stimulating round of exercise. He was more than ready by the time he reached her bedchambers.  
  
Well. At least he would not be bored for a very long time.


	3. The start of some experiments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Note: mention of past sexual abuse in this chapter

Unlike the rest of the southern Seven Kingdoms, the Dornish did not consider women who took up arms as freaks who did not know their proper place. A spear in the hands of a Dornishwoman could counter the advantages of a man's strength should she have the skill. So he had not scoffed when the _khaleesi_ had asked him to join in her daily sparring sessions. His pride had denied him the relief of begging off from the duty. The Hetrokdinh would have been called monstrously strong even had she been a man. Oberyn had to don mail, a boiled leather jack, and a gambeson beneath to survive her idea of a non-lethal duel. So did the other four participants who chose among themselves by lot to for the honor of training with their _khaleesi._ He suspected that those whose markers were chosen were not the winners of the contest.  
  
The shock of a blow barely blocked shivered up the haft of his spear. His round shield had long since been ripped away by another of her strikes. The other four of the day's duellists had been carried from the training ring by her healers. Only he had survived among two of her finest warriors among the Dothraki _yaegers_ , a former knight of the Golden Company, and a giant of a Southern Islander rescued from an Astapori fighting pit. It required every bit of his skill to fend off her _qattaras_. They reminded him of the gauntlet-swords of the Sarnori. Instead of a gauntlet, gold-plated shell guards cast in the image of her house's odd shellfish symbol guarded her hands against damage. One of the blades was a dynesteel cut-and-thrust blade whose point could punch through a breastplate with all of her force behind it. The off-hand blade was forked like a serpent's tongue to catch an enemy's weapon. At least this pair were a blunted tourney pair with leather mushrooms on the tips.  
  
Even in practice, facing the _khaleesi_ armed in such a manner was a daunting task. Agatha's swordsmanship was a bizarre cross between a bravo's water dancing and the graceful sweeps of the Dothraki arakh. There was something else even more exotic beneath that. One also had to deal with her decided lack of chivalry in combat. Fists, feet, and acrobatics were combined with the attitude that anything lying around was fair game as a weapon. They had long since left behind the dueling grounds. Upon and down the halls of the Great Yurt they battled. They swung across the yawning chasm of the great hall upon a chandelier fighting spear-point against qattara edge. Chairs were used as both shield and battering ram. The inevitable end came when a final blow sent him reeling onto a couch conveniently moved into place by Der Kestle.  
  
"Got you!" Agatha crowed in triumph, the tip of one qattara pressing to his throat.  
  
"Do you?" A stiletto pricked her right thigh through the leather sparring breeches. "Had this been a true battle, the fuller of the dagger would be coated with manticore venom."  
  
"You're as much a weasel as Tarvek," Agatha said, the battle madness receding. "Kestle, just a demonstration. Do not smash him."  
  
"Awwwwwww."  
  
"Deal with it."  
  
"A lover of yours I shall have to compete against?" Oberyn asked.  
  
"He--" Agatha bit her lip. "He was a sneaky, devious weasel who tried to involve me in his grotesque plots of world domination."  
  
"Your one true love, then," Oberyn said.  
  
"No. Gil and I."  
  
Agatha's green eyes widened.  
  
"They--I had to complete the Si Vales." The _khaleesi_ stared straight ahead. Her body was rigid. " _The power of the Dyne had been unleashed in me. I knew all the things. I could cure them. In one temporal continuity I did. Yet in the other there was just one slight imbalance. The explosive potential-- **it needed to be bled off--**_ "  
  
"Mistress?" Der Kestle asked, an anxious tone in the spirit's disembodied voice.  
  
" _ **Had to get away, enough to stabilize them, save them save Zeetha save the others.**_ " A terrible sadness pervaded her voice grown eerie in the reverberations that came with her madness. " **Transharmonic dimensional rupture, spinning spinning, so weak, where am I, what are you doing, no, stop, too weak spark flickering--"  
**  
Agatha shuddered.  
  
" ** _No. Stop. It hurts. Don't. Please_**."  
  
Silently, Oberyn guided her by her shoulders to her chambers. A bridge of steel and wood formed out of thin air beneath their feet as the Castle created a shorter path over the great hall. The dragon's head were already gushing water. He carefully stripped her of breeches and gambeson. Some part of him marveled at the goddess naked before him. Oberyn thrust those urges down. Agatha's quick breaths slowed as he bathed her clean. It was not as a lover he served her. No, he had done this often enough with Elia with cold cloths as when a fever overwhelmed her delicate constitution. Elia had had him do it rather than the maids. She had been ashamed her weakness might plague her mother's conscience.  
  
And then there were the night terrors of landslides crushing her and dogs savaging her as the fever twisted her mind.  
  
He dressed her in clean smallclothes and a green sandsilk robe embroidered with the Hetrokdinh's sigil. Agatha collapsed into an overstuffed leather chair by the hearth in her bedroom. Gently, Oberyn massaged her temples as he sang a melody that had calmed Elia in her fevers.  
  
_Gentle Mother, font of mercy,_  
_save our sons from war, we pray,_  
 _stay the swords and stay the arrows,_  
 _let them know a better day._  
 _Gentle Mother, strength of women,_  
 _help our daughters through this fray,_  
 _soothe the wrath and tame the fury,_  
 _teach us all a kinder way._  
  
"Teach me a kinder way." Agatha clasped one of his hands. "I have been so angry for so long. Red fire. I thought I knew humiliation and weakness when that miserable locket crushed my mind. I knew nothing compared to what I learned in Lys.'  
  
"Have these attacks happened before?" Oberyn asked. "I have heard of them. Some who have ridden to war suffer such."  
  
"Mostly night-terrors. Work helps. So does slaughtering slavers," Agatha said. "This was the first time I had one while awake."  
  
"I would not care to know a loss such as yours," Oberyn said.  
  
"They're alive." Agatha nodded. "That makes it worth it. After every rape, every beating, I told myself that Gil and Tarvek was alive. Zeetha survived this. So could I."  
  
"You have spoken of her before," Oberyn mused. "The warrior-woman who taught you the rudiments of your fighting arts."  
  
"Warrior princess training." Agatha flexed a bicep. "They didn't violate Zeetha. At least, she never admitted they did that. But she was alone and caged. So I learned from her. I waited. I got stronger."  
  
"And then Mistress showed them all," the Castle whispered.  
  
"I choked Khal Lorro with his own braid when he took me outside the walls of Qohor." Agatha bared her teeth. "Over his corpse I vowed I would never be weak again."  
  
"You remind me very much of my sister," Oberyn said.  
  
"You do this with your sister?" Agatha grimaced.  
  
"No, I am no Targaryen," Oberyn replied. "Although I have heard word that Mother has finally engaged her to the Prince of Dragonstone."  
  
"We'll get you home in time to see the wedding," Agatha said. She gripped his hand tightly. "I haven't---Oberyn, this is new to me. I'm not sure--"  
  
"I am one you might bed, but the gods forbid we wed." Oberyn smiled wryly. "A viper must be true to its nature. We are fickle serpents. You are a banquet. Nay, a seven day feast of delights. Yet one day there will be some charming maid or boy who would tempt me. Or some whim will send me far away."  
  
"I'm still glad you're my first. None of the others count." Agatha laid a burning brow against his hand. "I told myself Zeetha would never let anyone deny her love and pleasure. I wouldn't let them hurt me that way. This month has been incredible. Whatever else, I can tell you're going to be an amazing father."  
  
Oberyn froze.  
  
"You are--"  
  
"Tested positive this morning." Agatha's eyes watered. "And you over-achieving idiot, you put triplets in me!"  
  
"YES!" Der Kestle shouted. "Mistress, we must announce this in the appropriate way."  
  
"Of course--" Agatha gasped. "No! Wait!"  
  
And then Oberyn and everyone else within ten leagues discovered what the bell makers of Norvos had crafted under the Hetrokdinh's orders.  
  
**DOOOOOOOOOOOM!**


	4. Tactical Cowering

So sad, to see Volantis brought low. Lys was of course far more beautiful and pleasant. The fresh winds of the narrow sea blew away any hint of the ripe odor of corruption that had claimed the city in times gone by. Only within the Black Walls had the worst of the miasma dissipated. The purity of the Valyrian blood in the veins of the Saans had granted them admittance for an hour or so within the Black Walls when a Volantene noble wished to speak of business with Lys' pirate-lords. Such glories of Old Valyria had Salladhor had glimpsed.   
  
All was gone now. The vast walls two hundred feet high of stone harder than steel were now as much rubble as the mud-brick pyramids of the cities of Slaver's Bay. The Hetrokdinh had cast down in one day what had withstood thousands of years. The tale of the terrible weapons of light that had ripped gaping holes in the stronghold of the Old Blood. Not a trace of the Black Walls remained or the palaces within had been left standing. All had been taken by barge to be tipped into the depths of the Summer Sea. Did mermaids did play among the ruins? Salladhor mused idly on pretty sea-maidens with pale breasts swimming among the cracked midnight-black stone. As a final insult, the lands upon which the Old Blood lived had been granted to the slaves and lowborn freemen they had despised. They now lived in neat homes of whitewashed stone and orange tile roofs where the nobles of Valyria's first daughter had lived in glory.  
  
Strange, that a Dothraki princess would build rather than merely leave ruins in the wake of her khalasar.  
  
The Saans were not by nature a humble family. Yet the fall of Volantis was a reminder to Salladhor that fate, like the sea, was a fickle bitch. Pride did not save a man foolish enough not to furl his sails before a great storm. So it was not in the finery that was his pride that the Prince of the Narrow Sea came to what was now Mechanicsport. Not that he had demeaned himself to wear sackcloth and ashes as those tiresome godsworn did in the barbarians lands of the west. His black doublet and breeches were shot through with thread-of-silver to hint at the position of his line.  
  
Nor did he cower at the sight of the leviathans of the Hetrokdinh's small yet potent fleet. They were thrice the size of the greatest dromonds seen upon the seas. Hulls of the strange alloy which the Hetrokdinh had perfected from her studies in Qohor loomed above his finest ship, the galleas _Valyrian._ Dynesteel bastions swiveled about to present the mouths of the weapons which could spit explosive bolts that could batter a Westerosi castle walls into dust; it was said they were propelled by the power of lightning itself coursing through the tubes. Instead of oar or sail, a sort of windmill at the stern churned the waters under the power of steam produced by the wildfire-fueled furnaces in their bellies.  
  
The oarsmen beneath the decks backstroked as they approached the dock of the massive barge floating in Mechanicsport's harbor. The Great Yurt loomed above its all. A tiny droplet of sweat entirely due to the heavy air of the mouth of the Rhoyne dripped down one brow. He was not at all afraid that the Hetrokdinh herself stood at the dock with a horror of aged metal rising above her. It resembled nothing more than than if a knight's armor had tupped the Iron Throne to bear a warrior child. It had been nothing more than a seemingly-dead statue in Vaes Dothrak until the Hetrokdinh--drawn east by strange dreams--had awoken it with her blood. Beneath its shadow stood both the Hetrokdinh and her consort. His hand rested against a belly that had swollen in the five moon's turns since the Doom Bell had rang out news of her heirs. Salladhor Saan strode towards her with his retinue bearing chests of all his riches.  
  
"Mistress, the worm brings tribute!" the titan said in a voice of smoke and steam. "Along with many fine maidens and men! We simply must add in Satyricus' seraglio."  
  
" _Slaves, you Lyseni pimp?_ " the Hetrokdinh ground out. " _You dare parade these people as chattel to be given to me like a bribe to save your pathetic life?_ "  
  
"Salladhor would never shame such a great lady," Salladhor said. "These are the fruits of the pillow-houses and slave markets of Lys, which I bought to free them and bring them to the Breaker of Chains."  
  
"This one grovels nicely," the titan said.   
  
"This one I remember," the Hetrokdinh said, face flushing. "You called me your favorite when I served you in the brothel. Always promising I would be your finest concubine, and lounge upon the softest of beds."  
  
"My regrets," Salladhor said. "When I came to buy you from the house, you were gone. A waste you were to be gifted to that khal."  
  
"And they say my balls are large," Prince-Consort Oberyn Martell drawled. "Why are you not hiding behind your fleets in Lys?"  
  
"All the magisters with their wailing and crying," Salladhor said. "'She will come, she will come, we are ruined.' So why should Salladhor hide in his manse for what is inevitable? I kneel before you, the most beautiful in the world, bringing all my treasure and people to you."  
  
Salladhor gestured.  
  
His men opened chests with holes in their lids.  
  
The Hetrokdinh smiled evilly at the contents. Within were several men in the grip of a paralytic poison.  
  
"Also, I bring you the man who owned your pillow-house and his servants who beat you," Salladhor continued. "May you begin your tower of severed cocks with theirs. With them accept certain scrolls which detail the defenses of Lys."  
  
Cool green eyes regarded him from behind lenses of glass in a delicate gold-wire frame.  
  
"You're a conniving, backstabbing rogue." A flash as a scalpel flicked out, pressing beneath Salladhor's right eye. "But I can work with that. You were in your way kind to me."  
  
"I did not know the jewel I had lost," Salladhor said.  
  
"That was because my lady understood to keep her skills secret lest she be enslaved forever," Oberyn said.  
  
"Salladhor? You understand you are mine, now?" The scalpel cut deeper. It sketched a pattern upon his cheek, just as slaves had once been tattooed in Old Volantis. "I am expecting the sudden yet unexpected betrayal. Do not expect to rise in rank in my service. In time, should they prove loyal, your sons and daughters and their sons and daughters may be given the trust with which the House of Heterodyne grants its monsters."  
  
"I....understand..." Blood dripped down from the trilobite sigil cut into his fine fine face.  
  
"Good. Serve and live." The Hetrokdinh smiled cheerily. "Cross me and die."  
  
And thus did the line of the Saans preserve itself.


	5. Nesting Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, by comparison with her ancestors, she is still technically the "nice one"...

"Nyar nyar."  
  
Several pairs of eyes stared helplessly at the cobwebs above.  
  
"My father and uncle would be terribly disappointed in me," Agatha said. "This isn't very heroic, is it?"  
  
Eight-legged forms descended on thread of silk.  
  
"Nyar! Nyar!"  
  
"Gross, aren't they?" Agatha observed. "Still, they spin excellent silk. A neat bit of vitalistic engineering, if I may say so."  
  
Faintly, the prisoners could be heard rasping for mercy above the excited chittering.  
  
"I don't think I'm as nice a person as I was, before," Agatha said. "You were part of that. _You hurt me. I crawled weak and in pain out of the sea. And when I came to your door you lured me in and--"  
_  
As one, the spiders donned bibs.  
  
" _See this? I didn't remove it._ " Agatha traced the tear inked beneath one eye. " _I made it less obvious. But it will always be there as a reminder of everything I endured in this hellhole. **It is a memorial to everything I have and will overcome.**_ "  
  
Forks and knives appeared in arachnid manipulators.  
  
"NYAR NYAR!"  
  
" ** _I could have inflicted hideous tortures on you._** " Agatha smiled for too widely for anyone's comfort. " _ **I could have brain cored you into mindless drones. This is ever so much neater and final. I've decided to put you behind me.**_ "  
  
The poison wore off as the prisoners were dragged screaming into the cobwebs where several other human figures were cocooned.  
  
" _ **Dine well.....darlings. Heeeeee.**_ "  
  
+++++  
  
Mistress was one of the fun ones, after all.  
  
The Castle watched fondly as the Heterodyne administered brutal vengeance against those who had humiliated her. It would have preferred a punishment more poetically attuned to the crime against her dignity. The Dothraki herds had so many well-endowed stallions who might be put to such purposes. Still, it would not gainsay her decision. The rapists were being put to good use as eventual stock for more silk. Why, some of them might end up in a new wing of its yurt. It was a little more roundabout than the typical Heterodyne approach of flaying several enemies to make a tent out of their skins. It was still a delightfully nasty act that assured the Castle that Mistress had not been lost utterly to the clutches of Good.  
  
While monitoring the Mistress, the Castle's many instances of consciousness dealt with business of being the Heterodyne's household. The combine harvest-cum-reaper clank that it had once been trapped in was busy patrolling the outside of the Heterodyne's camp north of the city. Several centuries of her legions and Dothraki squadrons patrolled the outside perimeter of the grassy field. Several extremely amusing defenses of the Castle's ensured that anyone believing that had snuck past the overt guards would have a very eventful death. Inside, it monitored the doings of the staff and other denizens. Human minions toiled quietly in the labs and other facilities. Constructs of varying degrees of intelligence performed their own duties. In odd corners, the Mistress' odd clockwork minions tended to the mechanisms. The Castle idly squashed a few tertiaries. It didn't like them much. They bred more quickly than ghost mice.   
  
It noted with amusement that the consort was seducing a comely young man who had been among the tribute brought by Salladhor Saan. The Castle briefly considered staging a tableau by manipulating the Mistress into witnessing them _in flagrante._ No. As funny as that might be, the Heterodyne did not need such needless aggravation at the moment. The consort's behavior was within the bounds of what he had warned the Mistress his tastes might ranger. Well. If all else failed, the Castle would arrange an extremely graphic example upon the boy's person as a warning that the Mistress came first. Accidents did happen. Sometimes they even happened accidentally.  
  
Alarms warned it that someone had entered the Movement Chamber. Oh good, it was only the Mistress. The Movement Chamber of the Castle's current incarnation was not as grand as the great secret beneath Heterodyne Hill. It was a small room little bigger than a closet with the Great Yurt's heart installed within the extraction mechanism. Certain sciences that the Mistress had studied in Qohor--the local primitives called it "blood magic"--had lead the Mistress to the discover of a source of _elan vital_ as potent as the Dyne. The obsidian heart within the extraction mechanism glowed with eldritch light. The Mistress said that one could see visions within the flameless fire. The Mistress appeared to be staring deep into the heart.  
  
Ah.  
  
The Castle had expected this.  
  
"So it's finally done. I've had my great revenge." She sighed. "What now?"  
  
"There is always cake!" The Castle replied, a freshly-baked pastry offered to her on a mechanical arm.  
  
"Of course. Being a ruthless overlord means having cake." The Heterodyne enjoyed the treat. "Interesting flavor."  
  
"It was bathed in the tears of your enemies." The Castle chuckled. "No, not this time. It's the nutmeg."  
  
"It was made with love." The Heterodyne patted a silken wall. "I'm just having a post-atrocity let down. With the Experiments on the way, I can't risk a crusade against Tyrosh and Lys yet. I'm a little at a loss at what to do. All that's left to do is the paperwork of running an empire. Sweet lightning, I have an empire!"  
  
"Mistress is feeling the need to dig foundations," the Castle said. "All Heterodynes have the instinct to return to the town. I suspect it will soon be time for you to find some suitable redoubt where you shall build a monument to villainy and terror in a remote fastness."  
  
"I don't know if you noticed," the Mistress said, "but I appear to have created quite the kingdom for myself."  
  
"Oh, that will pass. Heterodynes never did hold onto their territorial gains," the Castle said. "It's always been the Heterodyne's way to leave the grand politics aside. They prefer tribute to rule."  
  
"I can't just abandon all these people," the Mistress insisted.  
  
"You shan't," the Castle said. "But the minions you have trained will be perfectly capable of following your detailed plans. All 14873 pages, as I may note. The Mechanicsporters will be able to rule themselves after a year or so of supervision."  
  
"And if it all breaks down?" the Mistress asked.  
  
"Then the children will be old enough that you can take the time to squash those who betrayed your gift. It'll be fun!"  
  
"Yes. Fun." The Mistress seemed a trifle unsure. "I thought you enjoyed being a yurt."  
  
"I do look ravishing in silk," the Castle agreed. "My responsibility is for the safety of yourself and your house. That is far better done with more solid construction materials."   
  
"I suppose." The Heterodyne began humming in a special way. "So, any suggestions?"  
  
"The prospect of a seaside resort sounds interesting." A map unfolded before the Mistress. "May I point out to you the island with a most appropriate name?"  
  
"Bloodstone. Torturer's Deep. The Stepstones." The Mistress smiled. "No-one there except pirates and....slavers."  
  
"NYAR NYAR!"  
  
The Castle chuckled to itself.  
  
The Mistress' little darlings would never go without.


	6. Sausage Making

_To my loyal followers, the free citizens of Mechanicsport and the Confederation of the Rhoyne, and all the sovereigns of the World,  
  
One might expect that a woman who has shattered cities beneath her feet, overthrown ages-old dynasties, and generally done her best to cause trouble would claim her place as Empress. It sounds nice. "Empress Agatha Heterodyne the First of her Name" is the sort of thing that looks great in the history books. Only I am afraid I cannot either claim the title from the dead hands of my enemies or accept it from my terrified conquests. I once met a man even more talented than myself who had seized power for the world's own good. He was _ miserable. _I will not end up an embittered ruler such as he who regarded his unruly subjects as children needing constant punishment.  
  
That is not to say I am abandoning all my responsibilities to those who have followed me. Nor will I leave to their own devices those whose lands I have occupied. It's like the old laboratory proverb: you break the apparatus, you end up sweeping up the smoking ruins. Or you get the lowly and comically-inept minion to do it. Because clearly she has nothing better to do. Not that I am bitter. Not at all. Although when I think of how they all secretly despised me--  
  
Whoops. Old resentments came up. Sorry. I think I'm better now.  
  
As the Heterodyne, I claim no dominion aside from some modest territory I will appropriate for myself. Nor does the House of Heterodyne claim any overlordship or tribute over anyone outside its lands. Although it may be wise in the future that some gifts--in the Dothraki fashion--be offered as a sign of friendship. After all, you wouldn't like us as enemies, would you? Ultimately, the Heterodynes are here to help. Bring before us projects with which we can apply our gifts. Present us your quarrels that we might arbitrate. Send your children and the children of your peoples to our schools to learn what we can teach.   
  
Just remember one important fact: my ancestors were the craziest, most ruthless bunch of lunatics who ever despoiled the world I came from. They would have called the devastation wrought by the Valyrian Freehold the work of rank amateurs. The Valyrians had one good trick in their dragons. Sparks such as the Heterodynes have entire closets full of toy chests full of all sorts of tricks that we secretly itch to subject to extensive field testing. What I did to the Black Walls of Old Volantis is an example. We're creative that way. And I, the one who has become a watchword for dread and terror among so many?  
  
_ I'm the nice one.  
  
**Which is why the house words of the Heterodynes, in the Westerosi fashion, shall be "You wouldn't like to see me angry".  
  
And slavery makes me VERY VERY ANGRY.  
  
**_But enough of threats. I won't proclaim rules that need my authority to be enforced. However, the following are a few suggestions that might avoid having an annoyed and very well-armed Heterodyne who has been interrupted from a great work showing up to deal with a mess that needs cleaning up...  
  
\---_ from the open letter "How do deal with your friendly neighborhood Heterodyne", the standard political text studied by all living rulers of east and west. Also used as an aid to relieve constipation among the political classes of same.  
  
++++  
  
from _The Body Politic: a Dissection,_ by Doctor Qyburn "Some Call Him Mad" Rivers, Ph.D SC!, Mechanicsport Polygnostic  
  
...the foundation of the Mechanicsport Republic and the Confederation of the Rhoyne in which it stands _prima inter pares_ is a classic case of creation of a political construct in the same way a vitalist crafts an organic one from available materials. While trained as a ruler under the guise of Doctor Beetle's secretary, Agatha Heterodyne had little training as a political scientist in her years at Transylvania Polygnostic. Mad social SCIENCE! was not a favored branch of study in her birth-world. Her background in such matters was direct experience of the philosopher-lord Sparks who dominated Europa as the time of the Transition. It was a political landscape very similar to the Hundred Kingdoms period of Westeros, punctuated by the rise of great kings such as Andronicus Valois and Klaus Wulfenbach for brief periods.  
  
It might have been expected that Agatha Heterodyne rule in Mechanicsport in the manner that her house had ruled in its partial namesake Mechanicsburg. Her astonishing decision to abjure the opportunity to reign over the former Volantene sphere of influence meant the Mechanicsporters had to rule themselves. It was a measure of Agatha Heterodyne`s wisdom that the Mechanicsporters had much to build upon. The _khaleesi Hetrokdinh_ had targeted the Old Blood of Volantis and the slave armies it employed in futile defense while being careful to leave the infrastructure of the state unmolested.  
  
For the Triarchy of Old Volantis did not, in fact, constitute the important organs of rulership within Valyrian`s First Daughter. A caste of eunuch scribe-slaves formed an anonymous but powerful bureaucracy who translated the commands of the ruling caste into orders for the vast machinery of slaves who maintained the city. The decay of Old Volantis in its wards on the western bank compared to the districts of the east and within the Black Walls was a consequence of these eunuchs obeying the dictates that ignored the lowly for the high. Once Agatha Heterodyne had defeated the Old Blood, the rusting machinery of state was swiftly refurbished with the skill with which she approached all mechanisms. The eunuchate and those they commanded were declared free and granted great funds for their service. Yet what became the Mechanicsport Department of Works ("A most heroic band of wandering repairmen!") was a continuation of what had come before.  
  
The _khaleesi_ _Hetrokdinh_ 's ad-hoc construct work in the Great Reform was, in her own words, a patch-job using both existing political institutions and memories of history studies of her world's democracies of antiquity. Citizenship rights were expanded from the oligarchic propertied class and Old Blood to almost universal suffrage. Only the descendants of the Old Blood who stayed to their traditions and those whose ancestors had once been slavers were denied the vote. The detailed taxation archives maintained by Old Volantis of slaves and indentured freedmen served as a census for who were now counted as free citizens of the Republic. From this population a College of Electors of one thousand men and one thousand women were chosen by lot to vote for a Council of Consuls of fifty whose candidates were presented to them by petition endorsed by at least a thousand signatures. The semi-theocratic role of the vastly popular cult of R'hllor required the approval of the High Priest to whom these Consuls would make oaths respecting their devotion to the Lord of Light and the Constitution of the Republic. A Patrician as head of state was elected by popular vote of all citizens for a term of five years.  
  
In this chapter we shall study the transformation of the slave-castes into the political factions that replaced the old Elephant and Tiger parties of the Old Volantene Triarchy. The influence by the Red God's priests and its militant soldiers known as the Thousand Flames as moral arbiters shall be discussed. So shall the influence of the Heterodyne to "keep an eye on things" be acknowledged....


	7. Throw off the bowlines

Daeron the First had titled the Rhoynar-blooded folk of the coasts as the "salty Dornish". They had become the fishermen and trade-captains of Dorne by dint of their epic journey in the ten thousand ships. That did not translate into any Dornish strength upon the waves. In truth, the Rhoynar lead by Nymeria had been the worst sailors in the world. Nymeria's genius had been in keeping the increasingly tattered fleet of river galleys together as they bumbled from one desolate coast to another. From the Basilisk Isles to the Stepstones, the not-really-ten-thousand ships of the exodus fleet had become a hated purgatory seemingly fated to never find rest. Oberyn suspected that Nymeria's command to burn the ships had been to cover up the spontaneous destruction of the fleet by its own crews.  
  
The salty Dornish might sail the upon the seas. They did not love it. They stayed close to the coasts of Dorne. The small Martell fleet of war-galleys usually was moored at Plankytown as a measure to dissuade pirates from breaking into the vital Greenblood. Oakenfist's shattering of Dorne's fleet twice over during Daeron's Folly had proven that Dorne's defenses were in its tenacity of resistance to outsiders. No, if he wished to make a gift of Lys' conquest to Agatha, it would not be by reaching across the waters to Sunspear for aid. Nor would the Braavosi aid the Heterodyne in humbling the Two Daughters. Braavos was well-pleased by the freeing of slaves. It was less pleased by the prospect of a resurgent Volantis with half the Rhoyne and the once Disputed Lands to draw strength from. The Braavosi had been suspiciously chary of offering their famed wooden walls to the Breaker of Chains.  
  
Still, Oberyn had vowed to the _khaleesi_ that he would bring Lys to heel in her name. He had to do something more substantial than playing drone to her queen of the hive. The knowledge of the city he had gained during his sojourn would prove as useful as the turncloak Saan`s descriptions of Lyseni defenses. Wood and steel to replace the Volantene fleet that the Old Blood had ordered burned abounded. The _khaleesi Hetrokdinh_ had many friends in Qohor. She had bought eternal freedom of the slaves of the City of Sorcerors by trading the knowledge of her land's metallurgy for manumission. The smiths of Qohor had profited well from the foundries for dynesteel she had crafted for them. Sailors among the liberated slaves and freedmen of Volantis had pledged themselves to her crusade. All that was required was an admiral capable of bringing the Heterodyne's strength to bear across the sea as her army had dominated the land. It was a testament to the young woman's strange luck in attracting capable companions that she had found the perfect tool in the stacks of a library.  
  
Rodrik Harlaw was the most unusual ironborn he had ever met. No slavering reaver, he was an unassuming man of six-and-twenty with a neatly shaven brown beard. Behind the unassuming facade was a mind who lusted after books the way most in his lands craved gold and salt-wives. He had sailed his longship into Mechanicsport the day Agatha had marched west to confront the armies assembled by the Three Daughters; while shattering the Black Walls, Agatha had made sure the docks of her conquest were in perfect working order. She had also established a library assembled from the tomes and scrolls she had bought and looted from Qohor to the personal collections of the Old Blood. By all accounts his _Sea Song_ had sailed away without him out of frustration with his unseemly indolence for an ironman. The heir to the second-most powerful house in the Iron Islands had settled into the stacks as a volunteer archivist. Agatha had discovered his presence when she had found that someone had improved the library's reference system while she had been away. "The Reader" had agreed to serve as admiral for her fleet in exchange for as many books she could reprint from the library. The heir of Harlaw intended to sail home with a fleet whose holds bulged with paper bound in leather.  
  
Now he stood beside Oberyn upon the deck of a Mechanicsport cruiser fresh off the slips of the Great Arsenal. The Arsenal was a vast compound a league upriver of Volantis proper where everything from pikes to warships were assembled with even more efficiency than the Braavosi Arsenal. The cruisers were similar to a swan ship that Agatha had ever so innocently convinced a Summer Island captain to let her tour. She had memorized every detail of a design whose secrets were diligently kept by the shipwrights of the Koj. What had emerged from her fertile mind was half-again as large as a swan ship with hulls of Qohorik timber laid over dynesteel ribs. The high fore- and aft-castles had been omitted. Sails that could speed her cruisers across the waves could be swiftly dropped when becalmed or maneuvering in battle; steam engines fueled by coal rather than the more temperamental wildfire furnaces could power propellers that let them run circles around a galley. The same engines powered the coilscorpions on the gundeck below.  
  
"Within two turns of the moon, we can set course for Lys," Rodrik said, dressed in the three-cornered hat and bottle-green knee-length coat of the _khaleesi_ 's fleet. "Amazing. A mere squadron of ten ships will shatter the Lyseni and Tyroshi fleets combined."  
  
"Which is why we sail with thirty such," Oberyn said. ""No kill is better than overkill', as the Heterodyne is wont to say."  
  
"Aye, a sentiment shared by her ancestors." Rodrik hefted the book he held in one hand: _An Amusing History of the Heterodynes_ by a certain D. Kestle.  
  
"One hopes that your compatriots who cannot read," Oberyn drawled, "have listened to passages from that book. She may not share their villainy. But she is as ruthless to those who would displease her. Especially if the ironborn among the captains and crew think to take thralls and salt wives."  
  
"Most are of Harlaw or mind our lord reaper's commands on the subject," Rodrik said. "His son Victarion is of the Old Way. But he is obedient. He will not betray her dictates."  
  
"Oxes do not." Oberyn glanced across the water to where the Greyjoy was commanding his own vessel. "He reminds me of an aurochs of an axeman my brother's bride brought with her from Norvos."  
  
"Victarion is a steady lad," Rodrik reassured him. He coughed delicately. "My lord of Sunspear, while I am not of the Old Way, my captains will ask their due accorded to tradition. Will the Lady Heterodyne consent to at least them taking salt brides from among the highborn of Lys who surrender?"  
  
"Provide at least the illusion of consent," Oberyn said. "A mummery of their families granting such brides 'of their own accord' should do. Your captains and yourself may also claim Lys in the name of the Iron Islands, to divide amongst yourselves as to lordships."  
  
"Salt and stone, such a prize." At that, the Reader grinned. "Perhaps Gwynesse shall inheirit Ten Towers after all."  
  
"The _khaleesi_ has little desire to revisit the place of her collaring," Oberyn said. "But in her name I shall sink my fangs in the flesh of those who humiliated her."  
  
The cruiser neatly reversed course as it set sail for Mechanicsport. The "heliographs" atop the masts flashed the orders of the admiral to the rest of the squadron. Reaver scum they might be, the ironborn knew their business as well as any and were braver than most. The Iron Islander captains who the Reader had recruited had trained the mob of sailors and liberated slave-oarsmen into green yet capable enough crews. The black gangs who tended the steam engines were from the Heterodyne's best minion mechanics. The clocks and sextants that she had introduced enabled them to sail far from any coast while still being able to reckon where they were. The fleets of Lys and Tyrosh were almost as skilled as the Braavosi. They would fall before her fleet like a First Man before a Kingsguard. Like the Dornish, the Heterodyne viewed a fair fight as a sign one has miscalculated.  
  
Rodrik's flagship sailed further up the Rhoyne--past the gap in the Long Bridge converted to lift upwards--to the field where the encampment of the _khaleesi_ was established. The legions of freed slaves drilled constantly in preparation for the invasion of yet another ironically-titled "Free City". Among their number were the Thousand Flames of the cult of the Lord of Light. The red priesthood had been kind to Agatha when she had found sanctuary among them after fleeing the khalasar camped outside Qohor. It was said many venerated her as carrying a "spark" of R'hllor itself within her. Agatha had not converted. But she was oft seen lighting the nightfires at the Great Temple of what was now Mechanicsport. Those slavers who had not been given to her spiders had been instead granted to the red god for divine execution for their crimes against humanity.  
  
The _khaleesi_ slept upon a terrace extended outside her apartments. Beneath her jade spidersilk gown was a belly swollen with three serpents born of his seed. An unexpected pang went through Oberyn as he laid a hand upon her. One of their children kicked in heliograph code within her womb. She had been teaching them it as an early aid to literacy. He had not cared much to be a father to the two bastards he knew of. Tyene was with her septa-mother in a village near Coldmoat where she had retired after the Starry Sept had expelled her from the Faith. Nymeria was four now, kept in the Water Gardens, after her Volantene noble mother had cast her out from her palace in the Black Walls for being half-blooded. The pattern of abandonment would likely hold true for the "Experiments" as Agatha japed. He would set sail for Lys when they were likely to be born.  
  
That was...wrong.  
  
His children deserved more.  
  
Oberyn cocked his head as he saw the scroll opened on the table beside her couch.  
  
Upon the parchment was a delicate ink portrait of the ruins of Ny Sar, where his ancestress Nymeria had rulled.  
  
Next to it were sketches in Agatha's hand of a city of Rhoynish style with what he now recognized as Europan architectural touches.  
  
Gods be good.  
  
"Surprise, Obie," Agatha said. Green eyes glinted mischievously. "I've decided Bloodstone's too depressing for a Heterodyne to live in. I think I will became a Princess of the Rhoyne. Do you think Nymeria would approve?"  
  
"I believe Norvos will have a very nerve-wracking neighbor," Oberyn laughed.  
  
"Well, the Experiments will be half of her bloodline." Agatha said. "Bringing back Ny Sar as Ny Dyne will be my revenge upon the Valyrians. I am going to rebuild every single city of the Rhoynar just to spite them."  
  
Even a serpent cannot squrim away, all the time.  
  
"Agatha, my _khaleesi_ , would you grant me a boon?"  
  
"Of course, Obie."  
  
"At the nightfire tonight, let us be wed."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Agatha--"  
  
" ** _YES!_** "


	8. Vedding Bells undt Christenings

All of Mechanicsport had gathered to line the streets leading to the Great Temple of R'hllor to see the wedding procession of the Hetrokdinh. The Hetrokdinh and the Martell prince rode on matching mounts forged from dynesteel. Their eyes glowed green from the _substance_ that the Breaker of Chains had tamed to become a source of power instead of pure destruction. All her _khals_ and _kos_ rode as an honour guard, with picked men from her legions marching on all sides. They wheeled about to form an avenue when reaching the plaza before the vast temple complex. Before it was a huge brazier from which came flames of an eerie blue fire. The scent of a thunderstorm in the offing had driven away the slightly rotten-sweet stench that still pervaded the city.  
  
A choir of priests and priestesses clad in red robes sang defiance against the darkness as the Heterokdinh and the Red Viper dismounted before the galvanic nightfire. They took a knee in respect before the High Priest Benerro. He was a thin, tall man with the milk-white skin of the Qaathi. Red flames tattooed over his face and shaven scalp leant him a fearsome aspect. Yet there was benediction in his eyes and upon his lips. Without fear, he thrust one hand into the lightning fire to bring out blue flame cupped in his palm.  
  
"The night is dark and full of terrors," Benerro said in a high but strong voice.   
  
"And she is one of them," Oberyn drawled.  
  
"Obie, shh. Respect!" Agatha nudged in the ribs. "Pardon the interruption, your holiness."  
  
"Alone we are born, alone we die, passing from darkness to darkness," Benerro continued. "From you, Lord of Light, we draw strength to pass through this black vale. Two have come before you, oh Lord, to join their lives that the flames within their hearts rise higher against the night."  
  
"Praise him and the Spark who carries his fire!" the great crowd cheered.  
  
"Who brings this woman to wed?" Benerro asked.  
  
"No one. I come here of my own free will," Agatha said, rising up.   
  
"Which man comes for to claim her?"  
  
"I would never be so presumptuous," Oberyn said. "I bring my strength, my love, and my devotion to the _khaleesi_. 'Tis not bow, whip, and arakh as befits the leader of the greatest _khal_ the world has ever known. One hopes my pitiful gifts are not refused."  
  
"Two free spirits stand before you, oh Lord," Benerro proclaimed. "May the sun which banishes the night bless them. May the stars which you have set in the sky watch over them. May the fire in the hearth of their home blaze brightly. Cast your blessed light as these two bright spirits set off to walk your shining path together."  
  
"I claim this man as my husband," Agatha said, "to love and honour until the end of my days."  
  
"I claim this woman as my wife," Oberyn replied, "to love and honour until the end of my days."  
  
"Lord of Light, smile down upon this blessed union. Be witness to Agatha Heterodyne and Oberyn Martell as wed--"  
  
"--because I have already thoroughly bedded her--"  
  
"--Obie, _shhhhhhhhh--_ "  
  
"--and let no one break them asunder."  
  
A small crucible was placed above the blue flame cupped in Benerro's palm. At the throat of the Hetrokdinh and the Red Viper were the sigils of their houses: the golden trilobite and the copper sun-and-spear of the Martells. Metal hissed when the brooches were tossed into the melting pot. Gold and copper mixed into an alloy whose shade matched the fire-kissed blonde of the Hetrokdinh`s hair. Wearing leather gauntlets, the wedded couple tipped the metal into a block of casting sand. The choir`s song echoed off the vast walls of the Great Temple while all waited for the molten metal to cool.  
  
From the sand was drawn twin brooches bearing a red-gold trilobite upon a blazing sun.   
  
"In the name of the Lord of Light," Benerro shouted as the blue nightfire exploded into a column of twisting lighting that blazed as tall as the Hightower, "I proclaim thee Agatha and Oberyn of House Nymeros Heterodyne!"  
  
++++  
  
Two months later, on a dark and stormy night...  
  
**_DOOOOOOOOM_**  
  
A child howled loud enough to rival the din of the thunder and lightning raging in the heavens  
  
"Judith Nymeros Heterodyne has come into the world," the Castle announced. "All tremble before her!"  
  
  
**_DOOOOOOOOM_**  
  
The cry was joined by another heard through the pounding rain.  
  
"Adam Nymeros Heterodyne has come into the world," the Castle announced. "All tremble before him!"  
  
**_DOOOOOOOOM_**  
The duet was completed with a final voice to the terrible melody. Above them was a woman's fierce and joyous shriek.  
"Eliana Nymeros Heterodyne has come into the world," the Castle announced. "All tremble before her!"  
  
The Doom Bell peeled out as Mechanicsport groveled in abject, existential dread and joy.  
  
A hail of crown-gold gears launched from the Great Yurt's battlements pattered onto Mechanicsport's cobbles. Not incidentally, causing both happiness and many concussions.  
  
_**"REJOICE!"**_


	9. Meanwhile, in King's Landing

Fool, Davos thought. I have aimed too high.  
  
No smuggler born in the stews of Flea Bottom should dare to sit across from a Hand of the King. Yet here he was in the solar of the Tower of the Hand across from Tywin Lannister himself. The Lord of Casterly Rock was everything that Davos was not. Davos thought he had dressed finely enough in his best doublet and breeches that he wore when meeting magister's men and merchant's agents. Yet the clothing that the Hand had donned hurriedly when the red-cloaked guard had brought Davos' gift to him put a petty smuggler's to shame. Being in his presence was like nothing Davos had every known. He felt like a gull on a shit-speckled rock seeing a dragon pass overhead.  
  
Tywin Lannister ignored him. Green eyes speckled with gold stared at the longsword that had been brought in an unassuming sea chest by one of Davos' most trusted men. Even then, Davos had not told his tillerman of what precisely the chest had contained. Such a blade as he had brought the Hand of the King would have tempted Baelor the Blessed to commit foul murder. Upon the red and gold velvet that Davos had chosen to wrap it in--all the better to honor the Lannister lord--the steel was smoke-grey with the ripples of metal folded about itself thousands of times. It was Valyrian steel: forged by magic and dragonflame with the lost arts of the smiths of the Freehold. Dynesteel was said to be as light and strong. It did not hold an edge or resist flame as Valyrian steel did. The dynesteel plate that Davos had commissioned from a Qohorik smith who had accompanied the Heterodyne's fleet to Lys had forged it the flames of a mundane forge.  
  
Tywin Lannister was said never to smile.  
  
The slight curve of the corners of his lips must be shadows from the flickering oil lamp.  
  
"Pardon my coming so late, my lord hand." Davos could not help apologising. "I am used to midnight dealings."  
  
"Peace. Have more wine." The Hand gestured at a decanter of Arbor gold. "This is Truth, of the Rogares of Lys. It was thought lost when he lead a host against the city that had given him birth."  
  
"My lord knows its provenance." Davos could not help pouring himself a goblet. He had carried many a cask from the Redwyne vineyards in his smuggler's galley without a chance to taste it.  
  
"I have studied all the texts relating to Valyrian blades," the Hand replied. "The inlay on the crossguard and the pattern of the pommel cannot be mistaken. How did you come by such a treasure?"  
  
"I took a Lyseni noble's daughters meant to be salt-wives to the Heterodyne fleet's captains," Davos said. "He granted me all his treasures for their passage. They are safe in a manse near the Iron Gate now."  
  
"There have been landed knights who have been reduced to living in hovels," the Hand said, "who refused all the gold in Casterly Rock to part with their house blades. Yet you bring it to me."  
  
"Oh, I'll be glad to have some of the Rock's gold." Silently, Davos cursed himself for half a fool for letting the wine loosen his tongue. "I'm no swordsman nor knight neither. What would I do with it besides hang it above my hearth? Better it go to one who may be worthy of it for a price."  
  
"How much?" The Hand was not one to haggle like a merchant.  
  
"A--" Davos swallowed a goblet's worth of wine to bolster his courage. "A lordship if it please you. A landed knight's keep if not. All I ask for is some small hall to give to my sons, that they be more than a sailor's heirs."  
  
"You mean a smuggler's sons," the Hand said. His gaze was calm yet terrible. "My house always pays its debts, captain. There is a holdfast somewhat in ruins in the west that may suffice. The house which once held it has no claim on it now. It is in need of a new lord."  
  
"My lord is generous," Davos said. "I have no need of your gold. You will find me ever your leal servant."  
  
"A lesson that you should ponder when you gaze upon your holding," the Hand said. "I shall even grant you funds to rebuild, though I caution you towards economy. In time, your sons will be taken to squire by my brother Kevan in our court."  
  
"I shall not take any more of your time, my lord," Davos said.  
  
"Stay a little longer," the Hand said. "You were witness to the fleet action off Lys, were you not? I have heard only wild tales. Tell me of what you saw."  
  
He was a lord now. A lord. Davos near drank himself drunk himself as one as he told the Hand of what he had seen. He had sailed to Lys to sell what he and his crew had salvaged from the ashes of Myr. Most valuables had either been taken by the escaping Myrmen or looted by the Heterodyne's armies. Yet there had been enough to make pretty coin indeed after a sennight of searching. Davos had meant to bring his booty to an understanding Tyroshi who he had smuggled for many times in the past. Yet the city had been in the grip of a slave revolt lead by the red priests. One could smell ash and blood for leagues around as free men and slaves battled each other from behind the black walls of Tyrosh. Only Lys had remained of the Three Daughters who had survived the Doom.  
  
Now there were none.  
  
Gods be good, the weapons of a bare thirty ships had torn apart a Lyseni fleet that had been bolstered by the Myrish galleys that had escaped their city's sack.  
  
The Heterodyne's reach was supreme from blood-soaked Tyrosh to Volantis-named-Mechanicsport now. The ironborn who had taken Lys the Lovely had raised her standard rather than that of the Iron Islands. The man who now styled himself as Prince Rodrik Harlaw ruled the fair city. His men had elevated themselves to replace the old nobility of Valyrian stock. The daughters of the fallen merchant princes and nobles had been called "arranged matches". In truth, they were granted as tribute to their conquerors as salt wives in all but name. The two girls that Davos had smuggled out had been meant for a tall brute of a Greyjoy. Davos hoped that he never crossed paths with the man. Word had been that he had sailed from Lys to claim some of the Stepstones in the name of the Lord Reaper of Pyke.  
  
Davos stumbled down the stairs of the Tower of the Hand by the time his liege lord gave him leave. He was drunk on both wine and elation. He had a holdfast of his own to call home along with his Maryam, his sons to be made proper knights by a Lannister, and even the Valyrian steel dagger he had sent to the Hand as proof of his claim. No longer would he have to risk his life against the sea and the king's laws to survive. I am a noble, even the least of them. What shall I call myself? Ah, I should not forget where I came from. Seaworth shall be my house name. My arms shall be a black ship and sails with the golden lion upon them.  
  
He was passing the doors of the Great Hall when he heard an unearthly shriek.  
  
"DORNISH TREACHERY! YOU PLOT WITH THE LYSENI WHORE TO DESTROY ALL THAT IS VALYRIAN!"  
  
A woman's voice could be faintly heard.  
  
"YOU ALMOST TRICKED ME INTO PUTTING YOU INTO MY SON'S BED! YOU ARE BLESSED THAT I SHALL NOT HAVE YOU BURNED! STRIP THIS FLAT-CHESTED DORNISH SLUT AND DRIVE HER AT SPEARTIP OUT OF MY CITY!"


	10. Plots

The doors to the Great Hall were flung open. Davos stumbled aside when the edge of one caught him in the side. From the Hall ushered forth a column of the Red Keep's guards in the black and red livery of the crown. Trapped amidst them were a bevy of maids naked as their namesdays. Most covered themselves in shame. Two did not. One maid with a form worthy of the Maiden and another slim as a spear walked with all the composure of royals born. In chains behind them was a man with the swarthy skin and dark hair of a salty Dornishman. Upon his tattered surcoat was a sun pierced by a spear.  
  
Gods be damned.  
  
It was Elia Martell and her uncle Lewyn.  
  
He should not be witnessing this.  
  
Guarded by three men in white scale and plate came a pitiful figure dressed in blood streaked robes and a crown upon his brow. The Kingsguard showed no reaction to the spittle flying from his lips. Long silver-blond hair matted from years without the attention of comb or brush fell almost to his hips. His face was one Davois had seen in days past when he had rode through the city. Now it was gaunt and pinched. He looked half a hundreds years older than his true age. What had happened to the king?  
  
Violet eyes maddened by rage somehow fixed upon Davos despite lying in the shadows. Davos took a knee before King Aerys Targaryen when he strode towards him. Davos closed his eyes when he heard the word "assassin". It would do no good for him to protest his innocence. His smuggling days would be enough to convict him. The lord Hand would at least keep his word to his family. He had faith in that. Lannisters paid their debts. Then all was still. Davos looked up to see Tywin Lannister stride out of his tower. All the chaos ebbed like the tides turning.  
  
"Your grace, my man meant no harm," the Hand said.  
  
"Guilty!" the king shrieked. "As guilty as you are, as guilty as this Dornish slut and her family. The Heterodyne has a Lannister look. One of your bastards you supported with gold to avenge yourself against those of dragon blood."  
  
"I have ever been your leal servant," the Hand replied. "I summoned this man to bring me intelligence of the eastern witch."  
  
"Clever Tywin," the king said. "You seem sour when I deny wedding your daughter to my Rhaegar. All the better to plot with the Martells to overthrow us all at the Heterodyne's behest, and have your daughter marry the Dornish you would set to rule in my place."  
  
Davos saw the guardsmen hefting their halberds.  
  
His lord was in peril.  
  
"Your grace, my lord Hand sent me to Lys to save two brides for your son," Davos said. "Talisa and Lorra Volarre, descendants of the Rogares. They await for a summons in a manse he secured for them."  
  
The world paused on a knife edge.  
  
"Tywin?" The king's rage slackened like a squall losing its fury. "You did this for me, old friend?"  
  
"I wished it to be a surprise," the Hand said. "It is one, is it not?"  
  
"My leal servant." The king smiled with teeth stained yellow. "That Dornish toad meant to marry this chit to my son as a slight. Watch as we walk her and her maids naked through the city as you did to that whore."  
  
Gold-flecked green eyes regarded Elia Martell without emotion.  
  
"Princess Loreza meant to wed her daughter to my son," the Hand mused. "Perhaps we should honour her wishes by wedding her to a son of mine. My second son, Tyrion."  
  
"Ahahahahahaha!" The king cackled. "Capital. A fine jape and punishment. And her conspirators?"  
  
"I have no doubt they are innocent as much as the Dornish can be," the Hand said. "My son Jaime has need of a wife. The lady Ashara comes from an honourable house. Ser Arthur is above reproach. It would be ill-done if word of this treatment to reach his ears without compensation."  
  
"Deal with such trivialities. Guards, come me to bring my son's brides home."  
  
The king and his entourage swept out through the gate to Shadowblack Lane. A shadow loomed over him. Tywin Lannister gazed down upon Davos without a hint of mercy. Davos bowed his head. He had meddled where he should not. He had lost all. Then came a whispered command. Davos nodded. It was fair. He waited for the Hand to leave before walking on legs as shaky as any new sailor's.  
  
Davos' home was a small, modest house on River Row. It was leagues better than the tenements of Flea Bottom of childhood. Long experience had him enter silently. Maryam and his sons slept as he gathered clean gauze and Myrish fire. Davos laid his hand upon several layers of gauze. The Valyrian steel dagger hissed when he drew it from the leather scabbard at his belt. Nothing was sharper than Valyrian steel. Debts had to be paid. He laid the edge upon his hand from little finger to index. He did this for their future.  
  
Luck, he thought.


	11. Quills and Ravens

Davos had had the privilege to attend two weddings of high rank. The first had been in the Great Sept upon Visenya's Hill the week before. The invitation had been delivered by a page of the Red Keep in the king's own hand. Davos had not been seated among the high lords and ladies. He and his Marya had been placed far back among the lesser lordlings and landed knights. Yet Davos could boast from that day to when the Stranger took him that he had seen a prince of the realm wed. Prince Rhaegar had been everything his father was not. He had marched with quiet dignity to where the High Septon himself awaited between the altars of the Father and Mother. The prince had been in black armor with the red dragon of his house emblazoned upon his breastplate in rubies. His brides Talisa and Lorra had been clad in the finest of Lyseni silks and Myrish lace. Seeing the three of them with the silver-blonde hair and almost inhuman beauty of pureblooded Valyrians had made it seem as if Aegon the Conqueror himself were present to wed his sister-brides. The king had declared they wed as such as testament to the traditions of the Targaryens.  
  
Davos tried not to think of why the High Septon who had joined them had been in office a bare week.  
  
The second was more somber. Davos stood witness in the sept of the Great Keep as Elia Martell was lead to the altar by her uncle Ser Lewyn Martell. The knight who once would have donned a white cloak to stand guard over his niece limped from the wounds taken in the arrest two moon's turns ago. It seemed as if it was Elia who was supporting him. The Dornish princess had not the radiant beauty of the Volarre twins. Yet he judged that her grace and dignity would have been the equal of Prince Rhaegar's had she been in the Great Sept. The orange sandsilk of her wedding gown rustled as she approached Lord Tywin Lannister. The Lord of the West was resplendent in the finest crimson and gold velvet for doublet and cloak. Davos had heard rumours the king had japed about marrying her to Tyrion Lannister with a dwarf fool to stand in for the youngest son of his lord. The fool had taken ill. So it was Lord Tywin who was to stand for Tyrion as two Great Houses were joined.  
  
It was a far simpler ceremony than the royal wedding. It reminded Davos of his own wedding to Marya in the sept in Maidenpool. There was no great pageantry that one might expect of such a wedding. There was only the septon's words of joining and the rustle of the red cloak with the golden lion as it was fastened upon Elia's. Arm in arm, the Dornish princess walked with Lord Tywin to where Davos awaited them with the red-cloaked guardsmen with lion-headed helms who would be her escort to the ship. The Dornish guardsmen who had survived the battle against the king's men when he had ordered her arrest had been sent down the kingsroad to return by the Boneway. Davos felt very plain indeed in his good yet plain mantle of green and brown. The newly-wed Elia Lannister smiled softly at him as any young maiden happy upon her wedding night.  
  
"My galley awaits you upon the Blackwater, my lady," Davos said. "Have no fear, we will have clear sailing up to Tumbler's Falls."  
  
"My lord of Seaworth is skilled at transporting precious cargoes swiftly to their destination," Lord Tywin said. "My bannerman Lord Lydden will escort you along the goldroad to Casterly Rock."  
  
"I remember well my time there," Elia said. "It will be good to meet Ser Kevan again. He was most gracious to us. It will fill my heart with joy to see Ashara wed to the fine boy I met."  
  
"Lord Davos, a moment in my solar before you sail," Lord Tywin said.  
  
"As it please you, my lord." Davos bowed. "My lady, the honour is mine to bring you to your--ah--"  
  
"My young husband," Elia said quietly. "I have heard he is a sweet lad. I held him in my arms six years ago. Who could have foretold we would wed?"  
  
Davos politely ignored the single tear that trickled down one cheek. Ser Lewyn's expression was as stony as the Red Mountains as the redcloaks closed up around them. Davos throttled down the unease he felt. It was not worthy of him to think it a tragedy such a dignified woman be wed to a lord so...afflicted and young. Such was the fate of the highborn. Babes were wed to men in the winters of their lives. Dale, Allard, and Maric's matches when they were men grown would have to be considered for the good of their house instead of love. The smallfolk could wed as they willed. Lords and their sons could not. He hoped his sons would do their duties with the same devotion that Lady Elia had performed hers.  
  
The wedding party split when they reached the outer ward of the Red Keep. The bloody stones of the walls seemed out of an slaughterhouse in the light of the setting sun. Davos followed his lord into the Tower of the Hand while the Lady Elia climbed into a litter bound for the docks by the Rush. His galley would be accompanied by two light warships of the royal fleet to ward off any attempt by the Dornish to steal the princess away. The Hand of the King took one last glance at his good-daughter being lead away. His lips almost seemed to curve upwards.  
  
Halfway up the tower, the two of them paused before a door from which loud crashing could be heard. A distressed septa in blue robes ran out as she ducked a vase that missed her head by a whisper. The precious object from Yi Ti shattered into half a hundred pieces. Scowling, the Hand strode in to confront a beautiful young woman whose green eyes were reddened by rage and tears. Davos stood with his back to the wall as a gruff father's voice scolded Cersei Lannister. He had heard she had been most wroth when Rhaegar had married the Volarre twins rather than her. He had half a mind to hire a taster to test his food for anything she might slip into his meals.  
  
His lord was not in good temper when they finally reached his solar. Brusquely, he rolled a sealed parchment across his table to Davos. A childhood in the stews of Flea Bottom had made letters as foreign to him as Asshai-by-the-Shadow. Yet he could read a map as well as any chart. His knees buckled when he saw what had to be his fief inked out upon a map of the Westerlands. Gods be good, this was no small hall with a copse of trees to hunt in. It was as great as the that of the holdings of a rich landed knight. This was too much! Yet he dared not say so to a man such as Tywin Lannister. Painted in the fine brush of a septon was the arms of his house: a black ship upon a pale grey field, with a hand with the tips of its fingers missing in white upon the sail.  
  
"There shall be a manse in Lannisport for your family and household," Tywin Lannister said. "You may keep it to stay in when you attend my court, after your holdfast has been rebuilt."  
  
"I promise you that I shall be silent there," Davos promised. "Smugglers learn their lessons quickly, else they are not smugglers for long."  
  
"I oft call upon my captains to say their piece," Tywin Lannister said. "You are free to speak as you would at such times when I seek counsel."  
  
"I will do what little I can, my lord," Davos replied.  
  
"Better an excess of zeal than disloyalty. There is still Viserys for Cersei." Tywin Lannister stared at the leather sack hanging from a cord about Davos' neck. "When I bade you trim your meddling fingers to keep your lordship, I thought you would skulk away with the gold instead."  
  
"Coin trickles away. A title and lands do not." Davos raised his left hand. "I would do everything for my family."  
  
"One's house is one's only legacy," Tywin Lannister said. "Even the creature has his role to play in that. As do you."  
  
"My lord?" Davos straightened.  
  
"When you reach the falls, you will take leave of your ship to ride to Maidenpool," Tywin Lannister said. "There will be a cog belonging to a kinsman--a Lannett--who lives there. You will sail it to Sunspear and then Mechanicsport with a message. Keep it in your memory."  
  
"Aye, my lord."  
  
"Tell the Prince of Dorne and the Heterodyne that a marriage unconsumated may be annulled by the High Septon or a Council of the Most Devout. And that my brother Gerion is also unwed."  
  
Davos swallowed. The Heterodyne....  
  
"I believe I shall soon return to the west to see my son wedded," Tywin said. "And after your duty is done, I would suggest you sail directly to Lannisport. It may not be entirely safe to be in King's Landing now."


	12. Doran Martell Is Officially Done With This Shit

Chess fascinated Doran Martell. The "Heterodyne's Game" had come to the Dornish court as a treatise bound with the first letter from his wayward brother after his capture. The complex form of draughts had become a passion among the courtiers. The click of foot and knight and maester and septon and lord battling across chequey boards was a common sound in the palace and the wealthier quarters of the shadow city. Doran had found himself enraptured by the play. Though a mere babe at the game, he had mastered enough that none could cause him to tip his throne over in defeat.  
  
Would that life went as well for him as the board. It rankled beyond words that the madman in King's Landing had neatly checked him with a clumsy gambit. Doran let none of his rage show as he considered the parchment before him. Its messenger held himself with all the dignity expected of a Kingsguard. Yet Doran could tell that the Sword of the Morning was dying from shame at being a party to this travesty. The hand that had inked the letters to parchment was Pycelle's. The words were Aerys': collusion with the enemy across the narrow sea; the treachery inherent in the Dornish nature; demands for levy of coin and hostages as proof of loyalty; a monopoly on the export of Dornish wine granted to some Tyroshi merchant-prince exiled from his city. And on and on. Oh, and it was expected that Oberyn be brought in chains to King's Landing to account for his treachery.  
  
His younger brother might have spat venom. The lords of Dorne certainly did. Ravens from all corners of his realm had fluttered into Sunspear's ravenry with protests over the treatment of daughters and sisters who had been Elia's handmaidens. Smallfolk and highbiorn alike raged that their gentle princess had been cast aside like trash to be married off to a hideous dwarf. Once news of the Iron Throne's demands became known, there would be calls for spears to be raised and the banners called for the honor of Dorne. Doran knew this all too well. It was the provocation the Mad King clearly desired, to prove him right of his allegations of Dornish treachery.  
  
"Ser Arthur, is your sister well?" Doran asked, voice ever-mild.  
  
"The last raven from Casterly Rock bore news of her wedding," Ser Arthur Dayne replied. "She says her husband is a fine lad, if needing some time in the yard with me to show him humility."  
  
"A brilliant match that will make her the Lady of the Rock," Doran said. "It makes us your good-brothers, as our sister is also married into that house."  
  
"My prince, I would not deny that her marriage to Lord Tywin's second son is a slight," Ser Arthur said. "Yet on my honor, Lord Tywin saved her and my sister from far worse. Aerys meant to march the maidens of Dorne naked from the Red Keep to the Boneway."  
  
Doran noted the knuckles of the hand gripping Dawn's hilt, sheathed on his belt, had gone white as his cloak.  
  
"You serve Aerys still."  
  
"I made my vows."  
  
"Has our perfect prince sent words that he will reverse his father's provocations?" Doran asked.  
  
"Rhaegar--" At his, Sir Arthur's mask cracked enough to show his anguish. "My prince, he is my oldest friend. He is everything a king should be. But--the Faith may have tolerated brother marrying sister among the Targaryens, but polygamy? Yet he spoke of prophecy when I counseled him against marrying both Lyseni girls."  
  
"Ser, Aerys is your sworn king." Doran picked up a white knight from the chessboard by his side. "Who is your lawful prince?"  
  
Ser Arthur stood as if carven from the same stone as the piece in Doran's palm.  
  
"House Dayne has ever been leal to Sunspear," Ser Arthur finally said.  
  
"When my ancestor finally gained peace with the Iron Throne," Doran said, "we did not bend the knee. House Nymeros Martell reigns sovereign in Dorne, in the name of the Iron Throne. We retain certain ancient rights that we do not usually exercise. Among them is the right of the kings--and a Prince of Dorne--to forgive and dissolve oaths made by our subjects."  
  
"Even the king upon the Iron Throne?" Ser Arthur said.  
  
"Especially the king upon the Iron Throne." Doran's tone flicked out with a touch of his brother's viperish nature. "We are entirely within our rights. Should you accept, ser, I hereby pronounce as rightful Prince that you are freed of all vows and obligations to the Iron Throne."  
  
Silence reigned in Doran's solar for a few hearbeats.  
  
Then a white cloak fell to the floor.  
  
Doran Martell set the knight's piece back in its place on the chessboard. White faced off against black. The black pieces were carved from dragonglass mined from Dragonstone. His ancestor Nymeria had lead a terrified people from the tyranny of the dragonlords in ten thousand ships. Then a minor family from Valyria had come to the west to continue their oppression. Dorne bore the scars of her defiance of the Targaryens in both people and landscape. Holdfasts all over Dorne had had to be rebuilt thrice over after Aegon the First had poured dragonfire upon the land. Never the most populous, Dorne's people were a fraction of what they had been before both Aegon and then the first Daeron tried to subdue them. Doran was always mindful of the costs of war.  
  
He thought of the portrait that had arrived with the last missive from Oberyn before embarking on the Heterodyne's conquest of Lys. It was the least of the wonders in the hold of the carrack. Many of those wonders were now placed upon the walls of Sunspear and in certain ships of the Dornish fleet. The portrait was limned through light and lens rather than paint and brush. In the white and gray portrait upon a tin plate was his brother standing with a broad smile beside his beauty of a wife. The expression on the Heterodyne`s features had convinced Doran that this was indeed the woman who had burnt down half a continent to prove a point. With the portrait and the useful gifts had come sketches and plans to bring water from the source of the Torrentine to down to the arid sands of Dorne.  
  
Lord Tywin's creature was in the Spear Tower in a comfortable apartment that was not a cell by reason of courtesy. The smuggler-lord would not be bringing the Lord of Casterly Rock's "generous" offer to the Heterodyne. A retinue of Dornish knights would escort this Lord Davos through the Prince's Pass to the Westerlands to bring Doran's reply to the lion lord. One would be the proclamation that Elia's sham of a marriage to the creature was dissolved. With it would be sent a chessboard along with a copy of the treatise on the game. With it would be a lute, upon which would be tied parchments bearing representations of the engines that his goodsister meant to bore great tunnels to bring the waters of the Torrentine east.  
  
With a flick of his fingers, Prince Doran Martell tipped over the chessboard.


	13. A World Turned Upside Down

Cersei's nails bit into the heels of her hands. The red silk of her dress hid the spatters that dripped from the wounds. From the shadows, she watched the Dornish whore make a fool of herself with her Jaime. The dark-haired slut's gown was damp from sweat as she lunged at Jaime with a spear shaft tipped with a leather practise head. It clung to her body like the skin of a peach gone too ripe. Jaime laughed mockingly as his wooden waster slipped past her guard to smack her lightly on her thigh. Would that he make a red rose flower on her head for thinking she could play the warrior with a lion.  
  
Laughter echoed around the hall deep within Casterly Rock. The whore had an audience. Lewyn Martell sauntered over to help the slut with her stance. Ah. Of course. She and the disgraced prince from Sunspear were likely fucking. Cersei grinned. All she had to do was arrange for them to be found out. Then Lewyn could be beheaded by her father with their family's Valyrian blade, and the whore consigned to the silent sisters. Mayhaps father would have her tongue torn out. No, that would not be enough. She should have her private parts ripped from her and burned before her like Lord Darklyn's wife. Poor Jaime. He had no idea he was being horned. He even asked the Dornish prince for advice.  
  
More laughter drew Cersei's gaze to a bench nearby. Contempt twisted her lips when she saw the imp's capering. The _valonqar_ was walking on a rope strung tight between two pillars like a freak in a mummer's act. The other Dornish whore clapped her hands at the sight. Cersei shook her head. How could Elia Martell be happy? She had lost Rhaegar. She had been married to the imp. Everyone knew that she was a hostage. Yet for some reason, she had been freed of the apartments that were truly her prison. For that matter, Lewyn was allowed to bear a sword and ride out into Lannisport as if he were a free man. Lounging against a pillar was her uncle Gerion. He caught the imp up when he reached one end of the rope, whirling him into Elia's embrace.  
  
It did not make any sense.  
  
Why were they happy?  
  
"Niece!" Gerion called out. "Away from the shadows! Our lovely lioness should be in the light."  
  
"Uncle. Goodsister," Cersei said, keeping her dignity.  
  
"Not goodsister," Elia said. "I am afraid my agile friend here has lost me as a wife."  
  
"Did you see, Auntie Elia?" the imp babbled. "I did it. I did it."  
  
"He certainly did." Uncle Gerion laid a hand upon Elia's shoulder. "Perhaps he shall perform at our wedding, my love?"  
  
Cersei wished to retch.  
  
"Do you want to join us, goodsister?" the whore said, profferring the spear.  
  
"A lady does not play at blades," Cersei sniffed.  
  
"Hah! When we were little, she dressed as me to learn the sword," Jaime said. "I was in her skirts, learning embroidery."  
  
"You should have been born Dornish," the whore said. "You would not have had to sneak dressed in man's trousers to learn the spear."  
  
"Then I would have learned to forswear my oaths as well," Cersei said with a tight smile. "Does your brother still wear his soiled white cloak, serving his traitor prince?"  
  
"He was freed of his oaths to your mad king--" the whore blurted out.  
  
"Ashara! Everyone knows that Ser Arthur's honor is stainless!" Elia's gaze fell upon Cersei. "My brother had the right to free him of his oaths, as he did me of my vows."  
  
"I would have been a good husband to you, Auntie 'Lia," the imp said gravely.  
  
"You would have been a perfect little lord for me," Elia said.  
  
"Come sister, play with us," Jaime said, offering her his waster.  
  
Huffing, Cersei strode away with the dignity of the lioness she was. It was only when she knew that she was out of sight and hearing that she screamed her rage. Bloody handprints covered the living stone walls. How could he? Changing places had been their secret. The whore had bewitched him with her filthy cunt and some sorcery. That had to be it. Her other half could not love her. There had to be a way to free him. Heartsbane? There were always shafts within the Rock that a drunken maid might tumble down. But Jaime was always by the whore's side, bewitched into thinking he loved her.   
  
Father would fix it.  
  
He had to.  
  
Cersei slipped into her chambers to change to a fresh gown. A cloth soaked in cold water halted the bleeding. Some time with paint and brush erased the ravages of her righteous anger. She must seem the loving daughter warning her father of the whore's adulterous ways. Yes. Don't say it. Simply hint. Cersei calmed herself as she walked the long distance to her father's solar. She passed by that damned smuggler that father had upjumped to a lord. For some reason, father had granted the sea-dog the old Tarbeck estates. He was often in conference with father or her uncle Kevan.   
  
The guards at the doors to father's solar tried to bar her. A withering glare put them in their place. Cersei slipped inside. Within was a great chamber carved from the Rock. A great stained glass window of red and gold in the heraldry of her house brought in light through a shaft bored to the surface. Everywhere there were fine furnishings and objects that had come as tribute from all over the world to the kings and lords of the West. Hung above the hearth flanked by golden lions was the smoky grey blade of Brightroar, brought back from Valyria itself.  
  
Cersei paused in shock. Father was...drunk? He could not be drunk. Yet her father sat slouched in a chair behind a desk strewn with papers. Dangling from one hand was a goblet from which dripped wine onto a precious Myrish carpet. He seemed old for some reason. He stared at a statue that had come from the east. Cersei could not help but shiver. The statue was of a woman in armor with oddly Lannister features and hair. In her hands was a strange sword and a broken chain. The cast of the statue's features were set in cold determination like...well...her father.  
  
The Heterodyne.  
  
"They worship her as a goddess," Father said, in a voice free of drunken slurring. "There are shrines of her from Mechanicsport to Braavos."  
  
"She is just some upjumped bedslave, Father," Cersei said.   
  
"Bedslaves do not command Dothraki khalasars," Father said. His hand rested lightly on a book. "The Citadel sent a copy of her family history to me. _An Amusing History of the Heterodynes._ "  
  
Cersei peeked at the page that had been left open.  
  
Oh, gods.  
  
"That 'bedslave' is heir to at least thirty generations of conquerors," Father continued, "who could have eaten Aegon and his two sisters and their three dragons alive. The drilling engines that she intends to gift Doran Martell could crack the Rock open. And those are, if even half the tales in this book are true, among the least of what these Sparks are capable of."  
  
Father drank right from the bottle.  
  
"Pycelle sent me a raven of the small fleet from the Arbor sent to take Starfall," Father said. "Three sloops anchored at the mouth of the Torrentine shattered twenty Redwyne galleys. A squadron of the royal fleet sent against Sunspear was lost with all hands. She will come for us all in time."  
  
Green-flecked eyes full of anguish stared at Cersei.  
  
"There is a new Prince in Pentos now," Father said. "I--I failed you, sweetling. I could not make you queen. Yet I will do my best to make you a princess. He will be seeking a bride. He is of good Valyrian stock and has the favor of this Heterodyne. I will keep you safe."  
  
No. No!   
  
Father continued on. Cersei heard nothing.  
  
The Heterodyne had ruined _everything_.


	14. Release the Kraken!

_*Bloop*_  
  
_Victarion's eyelids fluttered open._  
  
_*Bloop*_  
  
_He felt water around him._  
  
_*Bloop*_  
  
_The last he recalled was charging the Unsullied who had rushed to man the gates in Lys' walls._  
  
_*Bloop*_  
  
_Oh. He was in the Drowned God's watery halls._  
  
_"My first succressful resurrection. The Mistress will be so proud."_  
  
_Victarion stared through bright blue fluid and glass at the face before him._  
  
_"You are not the Drowned God."_  
  
_*No. I am Qyburn." Ah. It was the maester who had joined them as the fleet's barber-surgeon. "Once a maester chained and sworn. Yet once I met our Mistress in Qohor, I shattered my chain. Knowledge should not bind us."_  
  
_Victarion's gaze flicked to several other jars containing parts of...himself._  
  
_"Not to worry, we will have you sewn up good as new." Qyburn rubbed his hands. "Better, if truth be told. How do you feel about...tentacles?"_  
  
_Victarion Greyjoy`s head grinned a strange and terrible smile._  
  
+++++  
  
Victarion's gills pulsed as he skimmed along the bottom. Though clad in dynesteel plate, the sucker-lined tentacles sticking out through openings in his backplate supported him above the pebble-lined river bottom. Second eyelids protected his eyes from the water. Above he could see the flickering of a campfire above the the surface of the water. A gauntlet of lobstered steel tightened around the haft of his axe. Lips peeled back from a mouth filled with shark's teeth. _What is dead never dies, but rises harder and stronger._  
  
The first pirate died when a tentacle snapped his neck. Another died a second later when his axe opened him from crown to cock. Then he was among them. Blades and spear-heads skittered off his plate. One bold man's greatsword managed to bite through a gauntlet when Victarion absently caught it. The edge was stopped by skin gray as a shark's and tough as boiled leather. The pirate band was so set upon defending themselves from the monster that had erupted from the river that the rest of his men charged in. What happened after was less battle than sharks swarming drowning men.  
  
Victarion cracked open the visor of his helm--worked into the kraken of his house's sigil--to spew water from his lungs. He oft forgot when in anticipation for battle. The gill-slits beneath his aventail closed while he drew breaths of true air. Salt and stone, how lucky he had been that the magister had had his daughters spirited away. Oh, he had still crushed the treacherous Lyseni's skull with a fist. But if Victarion had taken the two as salt brides, he would have been caught in the soft trap that was Lys. Too many of the Thirty Captains who had taken the Free City now grew weak as greenlanders in their manses and estates. His rage over being cheated had driven him to battle again. Battle was where he belonged.  
  
There was little enough plunder to be had among this rabble. All the strong pirate bands who had infested the Stepstones had been destroyed in the first few moon's turns of the campaign. Victarion's fleet had scoured the islands clean. These were the last: fifteen men hiding upstream of a small cove in the wilds of Bloodstone. He cut one man's golden earring from his ear out of respect for the iron price. He left his men to pick over what they would. Over the groans of the dying came the cries of women. What was strange was the cries were joyful. Women shouted to gods both old and new and of the east when they saw the Heterodyne's sigil in the heraldry of his men. Victarion never thought there would be a day when maids were happy to see ironborn among them.  
  
It has been a hard, hard thing to do. He had grown knowing in his bones that he would serve Balon, then his sons should the Drowned God take his eldest brother. Yet his course had been set spinning like a longship caught in a maelstrom when he had seen the woman with reaver's eyes. He had not dared meet them lest he shame himself before her. Would that fate had taken him to Lys the year she had been prisoner there. He would have stormed the brothel axe in hand, and then handed it to her to carve their way free. What strong sons he could have sired in her belly. A pity it had been the Dornishman who had taken her fancy. Prince Oberyn was a fine hand in battle. But Victarion misliked the japes sent his way. Well. If he could not be her rock husband? He touched the bloodstained tabard over his breast: a black shield with a golden kraken with its tentacles twined around the Hererodyne sigil. He hoped his lord father would forgive him for swearing to be Baron Victarion of House Greyjoy of Bloodstone.  
  
He waited for Qyburn's gleaners to select what they would from the fallen pirates. His men stayed aside from the hooded-- Well, Victarion preferred to think of what was beneath the cloaks and robes as men. Qyburn had chosen to act as maester--even if he had broken his chain--to his new house. Some prattle about always having "fresh material" when with Victarion. Victarion assembled his men. A few were lightly wounded. None would need much attention. He marched at their head back to the coast. Already men were proposing to the rescued captives to take them as salt-wives. A few among the ironborn of his host had muttered about asking making mock of the iron price. Well, some sore heads and a reminder of the Heterodyne's views of even thralldom quieted that sort of talk. Victarion did not bother taking one. There were already fifteen from the concubines he had taken in Lys as salt-wives and rescued captives during the campaign. The squabbling among them drove him out to sea.  
  
Oars stoked across the water as they returned to the ships. Several longships with steam engines and two courser-ships. The coursers were the smaller cousin's to the great cruisers of the Reader's or the Volantene fleet. With two masts and a shallower draft, they were sprightly ships that could patrol the narrow waters between the Stepstones. Twenty-two coilscorpions on a single deck could shatter any war galley or reduce any holdfast if called upon. Victarion boarded his courser _Reaver's Eyes_ by climbing up the side with his tentacles. He headed after to his cabin in the stern. There waited Myrcella, a pretty blonde of eight-and-ten who had been sold by her stepmother in Duskendale to a passing Tyroshi trader. He had taken her as salt-bride when conquering Torturer's Deep for an anchorage for the fleet. He licked his lips as the curvy girl undid his harness. He had a thirst tonight that would not be satisfied by black tar rum.  
  
In one corner, a glass candle flared to life.  
  
"My lady." Victarion knelt, still half in his plate. "You honour me."  
  
"I am afraid I am not nearly as pretty as my mistress," a voice said from the flameless flame.  
  
"Castle." Victarion was glad he had a spine again to grow cold. "Is anything amiss with the lady?"  
  
"No, no, nothing wrong--"  
  
In the background, there was a crash.  
  
"HOW DID THEY FIND THAT ROLLERSKATING GIRAFFE CLANK?!"  
  
"--merely the experiments being little scamps." The spirit of her holdfast sighed. "It has been so long. Well,as you can see, the Mistress is intent on mothering her children. That's why you might take care of the war."  
  
"War?" Victarion grinned. "Against who? Do we sail against Qarth?"  
  
"So eager for mayhem. I like you." The Castle chuckled. "No, simply a punitive raid against the Targaryens. They have been being a pest to the in-laws. Go, sack their holdings, the usual."  
  
"We fight the Iron Throne." Victarion rubbed his chin. "Should not the lady order such a great thing?"  
  
"Oh, no, I have all the authority needed," the Castle said. "The Jaegers and the armies of Mechanicsburg fought wars all the time when the Heterodyne was distracted by an experiment. "  
  
There was a loud explosion.  
  
"ADAM HETERODYNE, YOU PUT DOWN THAT CANNON RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"  
  
"--or child-rearing, for the more involved of the family."  
  
"OBERYN, HOLD OPEN THAT CAGE, I'M HERDING THEM TOWARDS YOU! BE BRAVE!"  
  
"As well, I am gaining valuable data watching a reigning female Heterodyne raise her children," the Castle continued. "So we can't have interruptions. I am sure you will be able to attend to the reprisal."  
  
The glass candle winked out.  
  
Victarion blinked.  
  
Well, best to find charts of Blackwater Bay....


	15. Packing bags

His mother would have found it beyond belief that her third-born child could rule an empire that stretched from mouth of the Rhoyne to the frontiers of Braavos. Doran had ever been the Prince of Dorne: diligent and with a deceptive placid nature which let him rule his hot-blooded subjects. Elia would be a fair Princess should the Stranger take Doran. Her gentle nature would have charmed the court while Oberyn would be the blade of discipline. Himself as the Prince of Dorne? Oberyn suspected his mother had prayed to the Seven that such a disaster never befall her land.  
  
Yet here he was sitting beneath an olive tree in a park in Mechanicport shielding his wife from the demands of her realm. For realm she had, for all that she protested that she wore no crown. The Volantene towns from the Rhoyne's mouth to the Sorrows had been scoured free of whip and chain and collar in a campaign he himself had commanded. Lys and the Stepstones were her vassals. In Pentos, Rags and Tatters reigned in her name after freeing the population of their not-slavery of debt indenturement. The magisters who had made mock of Braavos' decrees had given their scalps for his new cloak. So a web of politics threatened to ensnare his sweet wife so intent of mothering her children.  
  
Said children had the night before had almost burned one wing of the Great Yurt to the ground while riding a toy clank Agatha had thought hidden. Oberyn flexed one arm which ached from a fracture still ached despite time under a healing engine. Encircled by it was his precious little Judith giving suck to a bottle of her mother's milk held in his other hand. She had her mother's hair and the promise of her features. He had seeded bastards before.  
  
Never had he been a father.  
  
It was for his wife and children that he submitted to the chains of state. He had found it not too onerous once applying himself to the task. Dozens of her little clanks and silent eunuchs who had once served in Slaver's Bay and Old Volantis brought missives the various officials and committees. The structure had been adapted from the university under whose Master she had served as a girl. He considered them in turn, deciding some on his own while a very few would need her personal seal. It was a tricky balance given her Spark nature. A demand from the bank to pay off the collective debts of Tyrosh might have her dismiss it with the idle observation to have Salladhor Saan deal with it. While a question about water main repair might capture her interest for an entire day. One in particular was a matter that might provee an unwelcome distraction. He shifted the baby bottle to his other hand to address the plan brought by one Myles Toyne.  
  
"Peeka--" The man called Blackheart swept aside his hands, revealing a most ill-favored face. "Boo!"  
  
Judith giggled in glee.  
  
"I do so love a giggling babe," the commander of the Golden Company said. "Here, let us see how hard you-- Gods be good, she had a grip on her for one so young."  
  
"I see you have been planning for contingencies," Oberyn said. "So you would take King's Landing rather than merely raid?"  
  
"No point," Toyne said. "That would just bring the other lord's fleets into the fray. You need to break those dragons hard. Were, of course, your brother being troubled by the Iron Throne."  
  
"I agree. Were we to be at war." Oberyn patted his daughter on the back. "There. Burp. Good. Best to strike as the viper does, with intent."  
  
"This time we'll land at Duskendale," Toyne said.  
  
"I believe you mean to say you 'would land'."  
  
"Of course." Toyne winked. "The town has little love for the dragons since the Darklyns were destroyed. Bottle up the garrison in the Drum Fort, then right down the Rosby road to snatch the prize."  
  
"All the while under the cover of the coilscorpions of the fleet." Oberyn nodded. "Good. Do understand that such a campaign would be carried out according to my wife's laws of war."  
  
"No rape, no brutality during the sack, don't burn books." Toyne nodded. "The ransom for an entire city would bring coin enough for us all!"  
  
"No You would be taking the city and the Crownlands as my wife's possession." Oberyn smiled. "I would have such dragons as flee wander as beggars in their own realm."  
  
"And the fiefs of the crownlords?" Toyne leaned forward.  
  
"Were we have need to invade," Oberyn replied, "best that new and leal lords from among your august company replace those who suck dragon cock."  
  
Myles Toyne's gargoyle features became merely ugly rather than hideous when he beamed. Oberyn thoughtfully watched him leave while burping his daughter one more time. Such a delicate dance around the obvious. There was no conceivable reason an ox such as Baron Greyjoy would craft a plan. Victarion was a fine enough commander at sea. But he was a born follower of orders. Toyne? Oberyn could see him fishing for a chance to lash out at the Targaryens. Much of the leadership of the Company had survived after bending the knee to his wife before the east's greatest sellsword army had been mauled in oblivion. They were supposed to be under eternal contract to the Heterodyne. Old dreams of home did die hard, mind.  
  
Oberyn was not an idiot even if at times he might have been the fool. There had been too little news from across the water. It was almost as if a certain something had engaged in a conspiracy of silence to avoid stirring his wife's wrath. That would distract her from the Experiments. That would not do. So Oberyn would play the mushroom, subsisting on darkness and shit, while others quietly settled matters in the name of the Heterodyne. Oberyn's smile was like a speartip as he thought of the venom had had added to the edge of the blade that might be descending on a certain king's neck.  
  
His wife did enjoy reconstructing towns after devastating them, after all.  
  
Oberyn played spear and shield with Judith after placing her into the sling worn around his body. Judith laughed when his finger slipped past her palm to tickle ear or armpit. She did learn swiftly. More than once, he had to snap away his head lest her spear poked an eye. Such admirable ruthlessness. He wandered across the park until he came to the bench where Agatha sat with Adam suckling at her breast. The child had some of his uncle Llewyn's character. He was the most placid of their children outside the influence of his sisters. Little Eliana was truly his child--already with a dagger of a nose and hair black as his--as she played with an babe's alchemical set.  
  
He sat beside his wife. Her hand clasped his. Green eyes smoldered in passion. It was said that children meant death of passion in bed. The zest of dealing with young Heterodynes simply made coupling all the more intense. They enjoyed the rare moment of their children not perpetrating another bout of chaos. Beside them, a Steam Cat from the Castle seemingly droused away the day. It shifted its head to allow Eliana a better seat when she clambered between its ears. Another babe her age among the others playing before their feet climbed up with his youngest daughter's aid.  
  
"This much like my time in the Water Gardens," Oberyn mused. "I was quite the terror among the jousters in the pools."  
  
"Raising hell early, Obie?" Agatha stroked Adam's head. "That is how I can tell you that these are your children."  
  
"Your own history speaks of more chaos than I ever managed," Oberyn said.  
  
"Point." Agatha smiled at Elaria. "They would have taken them from me if I had stayed a slave. I saw it happen at the brothel once."  
  
"No-one shall ever do that to them," Oberyn said. "After all, you have murdered every slaver between here and Vaes Dothrak."  
  
"There is still Qarth." A wistful expression came over his wife. "But that war can keep. Just like the one that may or may not be about to be fought in proxy with the Iron Throne."  
  
Eliana screeched in joy when stream blasted from her mount's nostrils.  
  
"Don't worry, Kestle." Agatha nodded. "I said 'may'. Both you and Obie are very sweet. I can read between the lines, though."  
  
"I merely wished to grant you time, Mistress," the Castle's voice said through the Steam Cat's maw.  
  
"My dear wife, be assured that such a conflict need not disturb you," Oberyn added. "Were such a thing to be happen, though all that I know tells me that there is no such war between us and the Iron Throne."  
  
"Well. I do think we should pay a visit to your brother." Agatha smiled. "Castle, have a a squadron of the fleet ready to sail in a week. Then we can all head to Casterly Rock to see your sister. Who had better not be a hostage."  
  
"Shall I have them put siege drills in the hold?" Oberyn chuckled.  
  
"Why not. Call them samples of Heterodyne mining technology." Agatha shared Oberyn's wicked grin. "Would your brother mind lending us an escort?"  
  
"Every spear in Dorne would march with you."  
  
"A few thousand will do," Agatha said. "Along with a thousand _yaeger_ , and a battery of coilscorpions."  
  
"I think my second visit to the West will be less dreary than my first," Oberyn said.  
  
"Travel does so much to expand a child's mind," Agatha said. "Did you hear that, kids? Road trip!"


	16. The Prodigal Returns

Dorne would ever be his home.  
  
One day, Agatha and Oberyn would take their seats in the palace of his ancestors. Ny Dyne would rise as a phoenix from the ashes of Ny Sar. Yet that would be many yearsin the future. Ny Sar was ruined to an extent that even his wife's still at rebuilding conquered cities would be taxed. That only encouraged his wife, of course. So much potential for _**improvements**_ , as she was wont to exclaim on reading the latest reports of Ny Sar's devastation.  
  
Even with the city restored, Oberyn doubted that his heart would ever be caught by the fields and forests about it. Nymeria had severed utterly her connection to the east. It had been to Dorne that she had and her descendents could come to cherish. Standing on deck, he imagined he could catch the scents of his homeland upon the winds. There was the dryness of the sands; the richness of the orchards and vineyards; the cool, clear air of the Red Mountains; and not the least of them, the mix of spice and sweat and wine that was the shadow city. It had been only a few years of exile. Yet his heart ached for his beloved land.  
  
Soon the two great passions of his life would be united. Agatha stood at the rail with Adam and Judith in her arms. They laughed in delight at the dolphins arching out of the water at the sides of the fleet. Somewhere reason, Eliana had found an odd tri-cornered hat with a skull on it. She was crawling about waving a wooden toy arakh and yelling 'yarrrr", Oberyn idly surveyed the majesty of the Heterodyne' Own squadron: ten of the great galleons armed with coilscorpions, with a flotilla of frigates to scout and steam-carracks for her forces. They were to show the flag along the coast of the Reach while the Heterodyne was on tour.  
  
"Big contrast from my last sea trip," Agatha said. "Lys to Myr, chained in the captain's cabin."  
  
"I am sure you are finding the companionship this trip more to your taste," Oberyn said, caressing her behind outlined so fetchingly in sandsilk trousers.  
  
"Between the Experiments and you, I never get any sleep." Agatha absently snatched Eliana before she jumped overboard. "No, you cannot ride a dolphin."  
  
"Allow me." Oberyn took Adam in his arms while she juggled two daughters. "Agatha, you know my past. I have sired bastards on other women."  
  
"As far as I am concerned," Agatha said, "they are as legitimate as these three little terrors"  
  
"My Nymeria was sent to be fostered with my brother," Oberyn said. "Her mother was of the Old Blood of Volantis. She could not be brought among the Black Walls due to her mixed blood."  
  
"That does not matter to me," Agatha replied. "If you are asking to raise her as your own, then she is my daughter too. It's not like we are about to run out of nursery space in the yurt. Same goes any others."  
  
"Then may Tyene join us?" Oberyn asked. "She is with her mother in the Reach. I do swear that this is no ploy to gain a paramour.""  
  
"Obie, it would take more than an old flame to doubt your love for me," Agatha said. "If that old flame flares up, then we'll talk."  
  
"My Heterodyne is generous," Oberyn said.  
  
"She is not the sheltered Europan girl she was any more." Agatha looked westward. "Wow. I am going to be head of a big family. Back home, the only living blood relation I knew about was my cousin Theo."  
  
"If you have worries about mine brother and sister," Oberyn said, "fear nothing. Elia will love you beyond words."  
  
"It is Doran I am worried about." Agatha frowned. "Let"s drop the charade for now. Marrying you meant trouble with your king and got your sister humiliated."  
  
"If Doran would believe that?" Oberyn said. "Then he is no Martell. We have weathered the last dragonlords before. As ever--'unbowed, unbent, unbroken', no matter the whims of the Iron Throne."  
  
"And I am going to make sure any dragon that shows up over Sunspear gets a warm welcome."  
  
Oberyn did not correct her. Agatha had terrible personal experience in that which was thought gone came back in most dire circumstances. And even dragonlords stripped of their dragons were dangerous. Oberyn caught sight of galleys bearing Dornish banners and the telltale barrels of coilscorpions mounted on their prows. Heliograph code flashed from the tops of their mast to others of the Dornish fleet over the horizon. Usually, the fleets of Sunspear and other salty Dornish lords patrolled within a few leagues of shore. For them to range this distance from land meant war.  
  
A watch chimed at her wrist. Ah, they were a quarter's turn from the launch point. They handed the Experiments to the nurses who had wheeled the iron cages on deck. Absent of their parents, the Experiments could get into all sorts of trouble without due precautions taken. It did his heart proud. Below, Oberyn squired to Agatha while she donned the armor he had met her in so long ago. She in turn helped him into breastplace, greaves, and a ceremonial shirt of copper scale. Both slipped on flight goggles. A harness secured them to each other.  
  
The Torchmen awaited them on deck. Freshly-polished brass carapaces gleamed on the sun. Membraneous wings were extended for long-distance flight. Stepping between them, Agatha and Oberyn slipped arms around one other as clawed hands gripped their shoulders. In their outside hands, the Torchmen carried the combined lighting standards and lances that were their main weapons. Turbines within them spun to life. Oberyn could not help a wild laugh of glee matched by Agatha’s as all four ran to the prow.  
  
The soles of their boots had barely left the bowsprit when the engines of the Torchmen flared to life. They climbed up into the sky with nary a dip at takeoff. His goggles darkened briefly when they shot up towards the noonday sun. Then they leveled off into cruising flight. Let the Targaryens hatch dragons once more! This time, Nymeria’s get would fight them on even terms in the skies rather than suffer the desolation of their lands,  
  
Soon he could see Dorne. From this altitude, if he looked to his left he would see the Greenblood with the ramshackle poleboats of the orphans moored together at Planky Town. To his right, he could see the Water Gardens where Nymeria played and beyond that to the distant Sea of Dorne beyond. Before him stretched the dry reaches of of his homeland dotted by wells. Beyond that were the deep sands.  
  
Below was what captured his sight and heart. Below was home. The Spear Tower thrust into the sky a hundred feet and more, topped by a spike of steel thirty feet tall. The domed Tower of the Sun rose behind it--mainmast to the foremast of the dun-coloured dromond that was the Sandship. To the west of Sunspear's inner walls there the three Winding Walls each below one another. The shadow city clustered among in with its narrow manses and squalid hovels amid them.  
  
The roar of the Torchmen's engines woke everyone below from the mid-day rest. There was a delightful word for it in one of Agatha's tongues. "Siesta". Agatha had the Torchmen pass low enough that the faces of the astonished people could be seen upturned as if flowers seeking the sun. Their speed was enough that no bowman on the walls could even think of loosing an arrow.  
  
Up they arced once more. Dozens of her little clanks burst out from under her armor. Propellers spuns as they wheeled about in the sky. Gold smoke blossomed from nozzles. The Torchmen wheeled around the flock of her mechanical minions tracing her sigil in the sky. Copper smoke issued forth from their exhaust as Oberyn and his wife looped around it in a perfect circle. Like a sign from the gods, the sun and trilobite of House Nymeros Heterodyne was emblazoned in the heavens.  
  
The screams of joy from the crowd rose up to meet them as they dived to the ground, His boots hit road before the gate of the outermost Winding Wall in time with hers. The gates opened as almost all of Sunspear seemd to be wrenching them open. Four more Torchmen landed to form an honour guard around them as they walked through the gates. The tips of their lances burst into flame, while pennon with the sun and trilobite sttreamed out below the lamps.  
  
The Torchmen were hard-pressed to keep the rabid crowd away. His people were ever an exuberant sort. _Oberyn returned_ , they cried. _The Khaleesi Hetrokdinh_ , came from every lip. _They have come to break our chains_. _Elia shall be avenged_. _Dorne shall be free!_ The last came as a halo of her little clanks chimed the aria of _Nymeria's Landing_ from her opera. Agatha's grip on him tightened. Yet she schooled her expression of fierce pride. One gate after another opened before them until they were in the outer ward of Sunspear.  
  
Where his brother sat at table peeling a blood orange, his Norvosi guard with his axe-wife behind him, while contemplating a chess board.  
  
Silence came over the crowd.  
  
As if hearing a curious sound from a window, Doran looked up with mild surprise.  
  
"Oberyn," Doran said. "I heard some commotion in the streets below. It had to be you."  
  
"I regret not waiting for your leave for ending my exile," Oberyn replied. "My wife wished to see Dorne. I was helpless to stop her from dragging me along."  
  
"Blame the wife, huh?" Agatha nudged him with an elbow. "The commotion was mostly me. Heterodynes don't do subtle, and old circus instincts die hard."  
  
"Goodsister." Doran smiled. "I have wanted to meet the one who brought this game to our land. Would you care for a match when you are rested?"  
  
"Love to!" Agatha said. "I noticed your fleet is on alert."  
  
"Some raiders have troubled us, yes." Doran sliced the blood orange into pieces. He presented them on a plate. "Your aid in our defense saw them off."  
  
"I assure you, brother," Oberyn said, taking a slice of orange, "in some little time, no more raiders will come."  
  
"And if they do," Agatha said, taking guest right into her mouth, "they will find all sorts of new surprises waiting for them."  
  
"Be welcome to my home." Doran rose. "Consider it as yours for your time in my lands."  
  
I am back, Oberyn realized. I am home


	17. Setting Up Shop

Around the Sandship was a warren of courtyards and outbuildings. One in particular near the prow of the old Martell holdfast had been cleared of its contents. Two Torchmen entered through the single gate of iron bars. The clanks carried a bundle of violet silk between them. It was the height of a tall man around and stretched a good ten feet. The Torchmen laid it in the center of the courtyard before retreating swiftly through the arched passage leading into the Old Palace.  
  
A tendril of silk rose out of the mass. At its tip was an eye of brass and glass that glowed an eerie red. Light from the eyes swept around the walls of the ward. There was a sense that something behind the eye was considering its surroundings. The tendril withdrew. Strange sounds came from within the bundle: the clang of steel, the hiss of steam, the gurgling of water through pipes. The silk twisted in a manner that reminded onlookers of a toothless man gumming down a tough piece of meat.  
  
Then it unfolded. Those foolish enough to have climbed onto the surrounding parapets or watched from overlooking windows doubled over at the sight. The cloth expanded in ways that dizzied the mind and sickened the stomach. It moved in more dimensions than the safe, sane three commonly known to humanity. The stones of the courtyard's walls groaned when the silk pressed against them for just a moment of terrible pressure.  
  
A tower of silk thrust up into the air until it was level with the domed top of the Tower of the Sun. A spire of dynesteel wreathed in arcs of lightning rose thirty feet above the massive pavillion's roof. The sides of the tent writhed before assuming the shape of a pagoda in the style of Yi Ti. Gargoyles and weathervanes and odder things sprouted out its sides. It arched with the sound of joints popping. Its sides contracted before it exhaled air with a relieved sigh.  
  
"Ah, it is good to stretch after a long confinedment," Castle Heterodyne said. "And this coastal desert air is refreshing."  
  
The people of Sunspear cowered as it bent down to study its new surroundings.  
  
"Such an oriental scene! It reminds me of the Old Masters' tales of raiding Algiers."  
  
The top of the silken tower writhed into the form of gigantic turban.  
  
"Look, Mistress!" Strange chanting filled the air. "I am a minaret!"  
  
+++++  
  
"How?" Doran asked, gazing about the entry hall of the Great Yurt.  
  
"Transdimensional harmonics and an eastern art called origami," Oberyn said. "Agatha was acquainted with the latter when a trader from Yi Ti visited Qohor."  
  
"My former Master Robur experimented with temporal harmonics," the Castle said. "The Mistress applied the experimental data I witnessed to spatial harmonics."  
  
"It all has to do with topologies and such," Oberyn said airly. "Mind you, a fully-unfolded Great Yurt would cover Sunspear from the Sandship's prow to the second Winding Wall."  
  
"I currently have 80% of my inner space folded away," the Castle said. "I can, of course, shift facilities about to available entrances as needed."  
  
"How are the defences, Castle?" Oberyn asked,  
  
"Active and eager to be deployed." The entry hall echoed with a bloodcurdling chuckle. "Is there any chance these raiders will try again, Prince Doran?"  
  
"They appear to be reluctant after we saw them off," Doran said.  
  
"Hmmmph. Too late for the fun."  
  
"Brother, where does her household go when this is...folded?"  
  
"Think of it as akin to spare linens stored away," Oberyn said.  
  
One of the delights of his marriage to Agatha was watching outsiders to her circle realize how much madness she brought to the world. Most saw her as a relentless conqueror or a crafter of devices. She was more than that. Agatha was a Spark to rival the greatest of her kind. Reality itself was clay to be sculpted by her hand. The laws of reason laid down by the Citadel were left trembling in a dark corner as she delved into possibilities that would shatter the sanity of most minds.  
  
Of course, his brother's expression of existential shock would have been quiet interest on anyone else. Oberyn chuckled. One day he would see Doran's mouth fall agape. He should see what was on offer in the more radical of his wife's creations. For now, he indulged in guiding Doran through what she called the fifty-pfenning tour. The Castle was quite courteous to its guest as they wandered passages of silken walls. It hardly activated any traps at all.  
  
They ended up in the stables. Mounts ranging from the finest to be found in the Dothraki herds to a yawning bear from Norvos occupied the stalls. Agatha was at work on the mount she intended to travel through Dorne in a "thematically appropriate" manner. She had changed from her ceremonial armor into the battered leather apron and sleeveless shirt of a blacksmith. Tight leather breeches and scarred steel-toed boots were matched by a green and white polka-dotted scarf that bound her hair out of the way. Doran raised a brow at such a common appearance.  
  
The Experiments were actually helping for once. Judith sorted nuts and bolts. Adam handed her tools. Eliana was happily pounding out metal on an anvil with a toy smith's hammer. Oberyn's heart swelled with pride at the domestic scene. A swarm of her little clanks assisted her as a massive humped clank was pieced together by the forge. Arms that would have done a Baratheon proud flexed when she lifted a complex steam engine into place.  
  
"Hey!" Agatha lifted goggles away from a grease-smeared face. "Obie, I'm a mess. Hardly fit for company."  
  
"You are radiant." Oberyn handed poured her a cup's worth from a waterskin. "Besides, I did want to see you in your glory."  
  
"Has he always been this pretentious?" Agatha asked.  
  
"He was worse when young," Doran said. He studied the clank. "This is a camel, is it not? I read that such are ridden by the Qartheen when they patrol the wastes beyond their walls."  
  
"My father built one during one of their adventures," Agatha said, patting the riveted steel hide. " _Race to the West Pole_. One of the funnier scenes when we acted it out."  
  
Agatha's happy expression darkened.  
  
"Wife?" Oberyn was by her side instantly. "Another bad memory?"  
  
"Good one, actually." Agatha shook her head. "Sorry, Doran. I have these spells. They pass."  
  
"I hope your time in Dorne may ease them," Doran said.  
  
"Travel helps." Agatha set down her tools. "But this is a working vacation. So tell me, exactly what happened with Elia?"  
  
Doran told them.  
  
Oberyn and Agatha stood very still.  
  
Wide eyed, the Experiments crawled out of the room.  
  
**_"THAT MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A--"_**


	18. Decompressing

Oberyn attempted not to fidget as they stood vigil by the nightfire. The red temple of Sunspear was in a modest building within the outermost ring of the shadow city. It stood hard by the third of the Winding Walls near the gate leading to Sunspear's small port. This was where the sailors and whores and humbler merchants from across the narrow sea stayed. The Dornish were generally as broad-minded about faith as about bedding. The septons of Sunspear had had to accept the tolerance of the followers of the Lord of Light by House Martell. Stiil, R'hllor's house in Dorne was little more than a narrow mud-brick tower just large enough for a nightfire and the apartments of the priest.  
  
He suspected that might change soon. As it was, the adherents of the Lord of Light from among Agatha's people had to spend but a few moments within the temple before making way for others. Only Agatha's peculiar status within the Red God's cult and his own position as her consort permitted them to stay longer. Oberyn would as soon as followed the example of the others. His most intimate experience with religion had been seducing Tyene's mother. The noses of the gods had been a delight to tweak as those of men. The flames did nothing for him. They did not purge the sheer rage of what had been comitted against his sister. How he wished to sink his fangs into Aerys' throat.  
  
Her hand squeezed his. Closing his eyes, Oberyn told himsef that he was not a Baratheon. It was not the serpent's way to rage. His blood must be a cold-blooded as the red viper of Dorne, which lay in wait beneath stones for the unwary. Looking to the side, he saw his wife staring fixedly into the nightfire. His wife was not precisely a follower of R'hllor. She identified with the Lord of the Light as an abstraction rather than devotion. It was the meditations taught to her when she had found sanctuary in Qohor's temple that brought her to the flames. They had helped ease the nightmares about her time as a slave and purge her of the worst of her rage.  
  
There was nothing more likely to send her into one than the public shaming of a woman.  
  
"Petty, stupid people with their petty and stupid obsessions," Agatha said in German, their tongue for private discourse in public. The vitriol in her tone could have etched diamond.  
  
"The dragons will pay, my love," Oberyn replied. "We may seat one of children in their place as overlord."  
  
"I am not condemning any of my kids to dealing with this continent's politics," Agatha replied. "Blackheart's land grab will have to remain an affair contracted by your brother. I can't have them as direct vassals."  
  
"The dragon's lands as the northern fiefs of Dorne." Oberyn chuckled. "And we are obligated to aid in the defense of our sister realm."  
  
"That did not escape me," Agatha said. "We may need more muscle for the trip to Casterly Rock."  
  
"Ten thousand spears may march in a fortnight," Oberyn said. "My brother and I will arrange matters of the escort."  
  
"I thought I was done with this," Agatha said. "I spent over two years up to my elbows in dust and blood. Don't get me wrong, the crushing of the skulls of my enemies is satisfying. But I was really enjoying being just a hausfrau."  
  
"In a few days, we may retire to the Water Gardens," Oberyn said. "There we may soothe ourselves and dream of Aerys meeting all the spiders."  
  
"You are the best post-conquest gift ever," Agatha said. "Go, the Experiments need their bedtime story. Tell Mama is working on not being so mad."  
  
Oberyn hesitated . His wife was hardly unguarded. His brother's men guarded the temple doors. Certain minions both mortal and not lurked in the shadows. Still, the dim and close confines of the temple put him in mind of a hidden dagger or poisoned needle. Agatha nudged him hard in the ribs with an elbow. Yes. The ritual of tucking-in was one of sacred importance in her mind. It could not be left to servants or the Castle. Oberyn dithered just long enough to position her in a less vulnerable position by the nightfire. He spent a few more moments checking the various guards before Agatha hissed at him to leave.  
  
Oberyn stalked unaccompanied through the shadow city. Ostensibly of course. His wife's own concerns no doubt had hidden shields waiting to pounce upon him. Oberyn was quite confident he could meet any threat on this ground. The shadow city had been his playground as much as the Water Gardens. He had oft slipped out of the palace to drink and carouse and wench with like-minded boys when he had been of the age to do so. That had been early indeed when those appetites had blossomed. The years of exile had not dulled his sense for the shadow city's little tricks and twists.  
  
He had detected the two children following him a few paces from the red temple's doors. The older of the two had some semblance of the art. The younger was much less practised. She clung close to her companion. There was a third behind them--a man in a stained leather brigandine with no heraldry denoting being sworn to any house. Oberyn knew sellswords such as this man seemed to be. Perhaps the man had come to find fee as a caravan guard across the sands or service to Dorne in the war. Perhaps.  
  
Oberyn chuckled when a tremor felt through his boots was accompanied by three gasps. He idly sauntered over with an appropriate smirk on his lips to an alley to one side of his path. The two children were pressed up against one wall. The hood of the cloak of the elder was thrown back. In one hand was a knife poised for a cast. Moonlight illuninated jet-black hair with a distinctive widow's peak combined with the white skin that could only be the result of Valyrian heritage. Golden curls escaped from the hood of the other child. Oberyn calmed his heart as he realized who two of his followers had been. They were too focused on the massive Steam Cat that had been shadowing Oberyn across the rooftops to dodge when his hands clamped onto her shoulders.  
  
"Nymeria. Tyene." Oberyn absently dodged the former's panicked cut, disarming her. "My regrets for not seeing you when we arrived. I had thought you, Nym, to be still at the Gardens. And I thought you still in the Reach, dear Ty."  
  
"Father?" the two girls chorused.  
  
"I hope to prove myself your father, if you will let me." Oberyn huffed as two pairs of arms clamped around his legs. "Although it seems your true father is in fact a kraken."  
  
"We only wanted to see you, father," Nymeria said, features so like his.  
  
"Mother sent me to Uncle Doran," Tyene said, all innocent blue eyes and gold hair. "When the rose men came about to ask about us."  
  
"Did they?" Oberyn said. He would have _words_ with Highgarden if Lemore was hostage. "Well, you will be staying with us in the Yurt for now. Release me, my little sand snakes. I must question our friend."  
  
"If she moves--" Nymeria slashed with her throwing knife.  
  
"Brave girl." Oberyn squatted, peering at the squirming figure trapped beneath the Fun Sized Agony and Death Dispenser. "Black hair, but your roots show yellow. With green eyes as well. Do you hail from the west?"  
  
There was furious mumbling from beneath the massive brass paw.  
  
"Is he Lannister, father?" Tyene asked, She withdrew two thin wooden skewers such the food-pedlars used. "Do you think he will tell if we use these on his eyes?"  
  
The mumbling became less furious.  
  
"Let us put him to the question sweetly," Oberyn said. "No screaming. And state yout business."  
  
"Seven fucking hells," the man swore, though softly, when the clank lifted a claw from his mouth. "As for who I am, I am Ser Tygett Lannister. My business is to talk with you lunatics before you destroy us."  
  
"Tywin sent you as envoy?" Oberyn asked.  
  
"Yes, I was sent to play the diplomat," Tygett said. "Which is how you could tell we are fucked hard. Now could you let me up?"  
  
"Our chat will have to wait," Oberyn said. "Castle, bring him to secure chambers for the evening."  
  
"Of course. Is he a guest?" The Castle's voice came hollowly from the clank. "Or is he a...heheheheh...'guest'?"  
  
"Bread and salt," Oberyn paused. "And the bread and salt will be what your Mistress and I would have at table."  
  
"He learns so well." The Steam Cat picked up a shouting Tygett like a kitten, by the back of his coat of plates.  
  
"Come on, my dears," Oberyn said, as his daughters gaped at a mechanical cat leaping up to carry away a grown man. "Let me read you a bedtime story with your brothers and sisters. I think tonight should be _The Heterodyne Boys and the Turbines of New Atlantis_."


	19. Receiving Tribute

The Castle did so like it when the tribute wriggled. The Lannister in the steam-cat's jaws spewed quite an inventive variety of obscenities while it beat against the guardian-clank's carapace. It meant nothing to a creation that could shrug off the local torsion-powered siege weapons of this world. Still, the sheer obstinance of this specimen boded well should the Mistress desire to satisfy any dark and twisted urges with someone besides her consort. Mistress had quite an array of implements in her bedchamber that her current consort had found most stimulating. She often commented to the Castle that she found them useful when he "got uppity". This tribute might need a bit of disicpline before it learned its place.  
  
The consort had commanded the Castle to treat the tribute as a guest rather than as a hehehehehehe "guest". It would usually have treated a command from anyone else than one of the bloodline as a vague suggestion. But it had an excellent working relationship with Oberyn. So it would in fact treat the Lannister as a guest according to his station. Said station being of course a fine piece of manflesh rendered up by a terrified ruler so as to kill them last. That never really worked, honestly. The Old Masters had maintained the fiction nonetheless out of amusement. It was thus the Castle"s responsibility to prepare the tribute for presentation to the Mistress without damaging it.  
  
The Lannister howled in rage as he was tossed down a chute into the seraglio of the Great Yurt. Mistress might not yet have the desire to sample its contents. A harem complex was still needed to house the many bedslaves and catamites that Mistress had picked up during her roaring rampage of revenge across the eastern continent. Some had been retrained into becoming nurses and therapists. Many had not had the aptitude to learn new careers. So Mistress had decreed that they became the--hehehehehe---entertainment staff of her court. Some were readying the tribute's new wardrobe. The Castle had already arranged suitable materials once it had heard it Mistress might become involved in the western continent's politics. Every major aristocratic family's heraldry and colors were stockpiled.  
  
The Lannister's bellows became tinged with a touch more panic.  
  
Ah, the ladies with the razors had arrived.  
  
+++++  
  
"Why could you not have bent the knee to the king?" Mellario asked. Arianne squirmed in her arms. "Now we are at war between two giants."  
  
"My love, how long would I have stayed Prince of Dorne had I surrendered?" Doran clenched his fist in a gauntlet of lobstered steel. "My bannermen might put my brother and his wife upon the thrones instead."  
  
"Then we would have been free," Mellario said. She brushed their daughter's dark hair. "We could have gone home to Norvos to live free of the scorpions and serpents you call subjects."  
  
"This is our home, my love." Doran leaned down to kiss her and his heir. "One day, our daughter will reign in my stead. I would leave some small realm for her."  
  
"Her inheritance is a curse." Mellario turned away. "It is a land where children can be sent from their mother's breast into the arms of enemies."  
  
"Oberyn will speak to our goodsister on that." Doran let pudgy fingers grip his metal-clad hands. "The Yronwoods will be well-satisfied with a Heterodyne to foster."  
  
"Go, rule over your lords and ladies of salt and dust." Mellario sighed. Her kiss was as ardent as when they had first courted.  
  
Arianne waved at Doran over his wife's shoulder when she retreated to her own chambers. Doran sighed. His brother had been harsh when he had once said that Mellario would have been better with a bastard in her belly in Norvos rather than a prince's consort. It had been all too accurate for its casual viciousness. She was a high merchant's daughter who understood little of fosterings and wardings. War to her was fought far from the walls of home by sellswords and galleys on the Rhoyne. Doran cast an eye over himself in a silvered mirror. In truth, he had little stomach for war himself for all that he was an anointed knight. He felt half the fool seeing himself in brigandine over mail with greaves, pauldrons, and gorget. Yet he was Mors Martell’s descendant. A Dornish prince who had declared war must needs be seen as a warrior for all that his sword and spear had lain forgotten in the armory for years.  
  
Ser Arthur Dayne nodded to him as if he were a fellow worthy knight when Doran left his chambers. The Sword of the Morning wore a cloak of orange trimmed with gold and red instead of the spotless white of his former order. Doran had placed it upon him the day he had called court to declare his defiance of the Targaryens; Ser Arthur had sworn the same vows to the thrones of Sunspear as he had once to the iron monstrosity in King’s Landing. His few spies there had heard in the taverns that Aerys had been so wroth that he had foamed at the mouth. They were joined by Areo Hotah leading twenty household guards armed with spears. His Captain of the Guards bore a simpler weapon than the Sword of the Morning--a long-axe with a six foot half--that was no less deadly should an assassin strike.  
  
All the lords and ladies of Dorne were gathered in the hall in the Tower of the Sun where Doran ruled court. Raised above them all on a dais were the twin thrones of House Martell. One of the high seats was inlaid with a golden spear that would be visible above a seated reigning prince. Its sister had the red sun of Nymeria where a reigning princess would sit. A murmur swept through the court when Doran paused at the foot of the steps leading up to the thrones. The murmur became a cry when his goodsister entered. She was clad in an elegant Rhoynish sandsilk gown in green and gold over dynesteel mail. On one arm was a turtle-shell shield that might have once been borne by Nymeria herself. Upon her brow was a circlet of red-gold with the trilobite-upon-sun that was an echo to the spear-and-sun upon his own princely crown. Behind her came her Dothraki _yaegars_ and freeman legionnaires with his brother Oberyn at their head.  
  
Together, they mounted the dais to sit upon the thrones. Agatha took Nymeria’s seat. The cries became a jubilant roar that required both of their respective guards to slam spear butts repeatedly into the floor to quell. It was Nymeria coming once again to Dorne to lend the Martells her strength. They were two sister houses--Nymeros Martell and Nymeros Heterodyne--showing solidarity with one another. Doran judged his brother the more keenly sensitive to politics between the two of them. It was Agatha who understood the power of pageantry and symbol. Doran almost idly looked over at Lord Ormond Yronwood and his heir Anders. The eternal rivals of House Martell appeared to be cheering as exuberantly as the rest. Doran quietly hoped this little display would silence any schemes they might have to plot with dragons to regain their former status as the royal blood of Dorne. When the acclaim finally died down, a herald stepped forward to announce the presentation of the emissary from House Lannister.  
  
Doran schooled his features into their most inscrutable when Ser Tygett Lannister was marched into the throne room between two of her flying gargoyles. Oberyn has regaled Doran with the most amusing tale of his presentation to Agatha. The Lannister knight was clad in a fashion not much less revealing. A harness of red leather crisscrossed an oiled torso to a codpiece of a golden lion upon red velvet held in place by the thinnest of golden chains. The pelt of a lion cloaked him. The head of the lion served as a cowl to frame stormy features beneath a mane of golden hair. The knight’s fists were clenched in fury as he stomped up in dynsteele greaves and sabatons enamled in red and with golden lions wrought in the knees.  
  
“Behold,” came the voice of the spirit of the Great Yurt. “I present a most delectable and vigorous tribute fit for the appetites of a Heterodyne.”  
  
“That is enough!” Ser Tygett screamed. His fist rammed into a gargoyle hard enough to leave a dent in it. “Typical fucking Dornish hospitality. So where is the pit of vipers? Oh, I am sorry. I am in it.”  
  
“Feisty, isn’t he?” The Castle’s voice was gleeful. “And his seed is quite motile, should you desire a change in bloodlines for the next batch.”  
  
“You damn near gelded me, you demon!” Ser Tygett snarled.  
  
“I had his testicles shaved for smoothness and texture,” the Castle said.  
  
“Obie?” Agatha stage-whispered.  
  
“My hand to all the gods old and new,” Oberyn said, a gleeful smile on his lips. “I said that he was to be treated as a guest of bread and salt.”  
  
“But not how he was to be presented to us afterwards,” Agatha sighed.  
  
“This is how emissaries are treated by your family?” Doran asked.  
  
“The Old Heterodynes didn’t get ambassadors,” Agatha said. “They received tribute. This version of the Castle never encountered the reforms of the Heterodyne Boys. It is, ah, traditionalist.”  
  
“Give me a fucking sword, you cockswallowers and slipper lickers!” Tygett raved. “I’ll take on seven of your so-called best by myself in a Trial of Seven to settle matters between my family and Dorne.”  
  
“Ser, would you mind finding some breeches for our goodbrother?” Doran asked his sworn shield.  
  
“I think it will take more than that to calm him,” Ser Arthur observed.  
  
“Not to worry.” Agatha held out a hand. Several of her little servants flew a--  
  
“A pie?”  
  
“Just the thing to calm things down, Doran.” Agatha hefted it in her hand. “Excuse me, ser?”  
  
“WHAT!”  
  
SPLUT


	20. Cutting the Blue Wire

His wife had oft spoke of her time as an actress. One of the pearls of wisdom she had learned was "when the action on stage goes wrong, throwing around a few pies gives you time to fix things." All life was a stage to the Heteordyne. Having a calming pie or three kept warm in the kitchens when a man notorious for his temper entered stage left had seemed wise. Tygett Lannister has likely never felt so calm in his life as the nutmeg-and-butter in the filling dripped down off his face. Agatha's farcical act of tossing the calming pie had shocked the entire court into silence. Something of a dramatist himself, Oberyn could sense the currents of horror and humour swirling among the audience.  
  
He might once have cracked a jape that left Tygett's dignity in tatters. Years ago in Oldtown, he had dubbed Baelor Hightower "Breakwind"" for an unfortunate lapse in control before his sister. Her infatuation for the Hightower heir had died in a fit of giggles that overcome her ever after when she saw him. Had he kept silent, might she have married Baelor on the voyage home from the Rock and escaped all that had befallen her?   
  
So it was with an easy smile that he seized an ewer of rose-scented water from an attendant before crossing the floor to their guest. He tore a strip from his own surcoat. Wetting it down, he offered it to the Lannister knight with a smile. Oberyn took no offense when Ser Tygett hesitated several moments before wiping himself clean. It was heartening to see his reputation with certain substances so notorious that Tygett thought him capable of adultering a rag in plain view of the entire court. The features that emerged from beneath the pie filling were drawn in a scowl. Agatha's perfected recipe enforced calm without creating the eerie tranquility of the original recipe. There was some puzzlement too as he studied Oberyn.  
  
" _Khaleesi_ , may I formally present Ser Tygett Lannister," Oberyn said. "The Lannisters are a wealthy and glorious house. It is fit that they send the greatest warrior in the family as their tribute to your magnificence."  
  
"I am not tribute--" Tygett began to snarl.  
  
"You are whatever the whims of the Heterodyne place you," Oberyn whispered. "Think of 'tribute' as 'hostage' if it pleases you better."  
  
"No wonder the Castle costumed you as Herakles," Agatha said. "He was a great hero of myth from lands near where I was born. He was half-divine, the strongest man in the world tasked with labours deemed impossible for mortal men."  
  
"My regrets for my hot words, my lady" Tygett looked yet suspicious. "Oft have others tried to tug lions' tails to raise themselves up."  
  
"I assure you, I take House Lannister very seriously." Agatha's scowled. " _And I don't find what your brother did to my goodsister very funny._ "  
  
From the looks of things, Agatha had timed the pie's effect so that their guest would start feeling the effects of her madness place about now.  
  
"My--Mistress, on my honor, we treat Elia as an honored guest." Tygett stepped back as if in the face of a gale. So did much of the audience. "He will grant her lands and title in her own right--"  
  
" _Alive, free, unharmed_." Agatha's words fell like an executioner's blade. " **_Or I shall melt your pretty, pretty little mountain to slag with so much heat that the seas around it will boil for a thousand years_**."  
  
Doran leaned over to whisper into one ear.  
  
"Oh, right." Agatha glanced at Ser Arthur. "Fine. I'll put your minds into otters or something."  
  
"Let us not speak of such dire fates." Doran steepled his gauntleted fingers, staring over them at a white-faced Tygett. "How fares our flower of Dorne?"  
  
"Happy, I swear upon the gods old and new," Tygett said. "Seven hells, the way she and Ger carry on, there will be a new hill or two in the west if they not soon wed."  
  
"That had best be true," Doran said. "We will of course be attending the wedding."  
  
"What? Others eat my eyes, you can't--" Tygett gazed at a stone-faced Agatha. "Bugger me with a blunt pike, you are."  
  
"You bet we are," Agatha assured him. "So Elia had better be thrilled with her groom. _Or else we can turn the wedding into a funeral._ "  
  
"I did so enjoy my stay when I last traveled to the Rock," Oberyn said. "Now we shall all be one joyous extended family in alliance against the madness of the king."  
  
"You do not demand we bend the knee," Tygett said.  
  
"I have half a continent to rebuild back east," Agatha said. "This petty bit of idiocy is a distraction. Treat Elia well, cut King Smallclothes-on-his-Head off at the knees, and don't get in my way. We'll be square."  
  
"Our houses have never been enemies," Doran said. "Only at the behest of the Iron Throne have the Lannisters ever marched against us. We would place the past difficulties behind us. Take oaths to me, ser. Prince Lewyn will take oaths to Lord Tywin."  
  
"My sweet sister will wed the Laughing Lion," Oberyn continued. "And no-one will have to adjust to having four legs and a taste for shellfish."  
  
"I must needs send word to the Rock," Tygett said. "I only came to offer myself. Such an alliance is beyond my remit."  
  
"You'll be able to speak to him face-to-face in a little while," Agatha said.   
  
"Brother, would you conduct our guest into quarters in the Spear Tower?" Doran gestured. "Unless he wishes to continue his stay in the Great Yurt---"  
  
"The Spear Tower is fine!"  
  
"--very good."  
  
Oberyn signed some instructions in heliographic code to one of the grumkin-clanks. The brass-cases servant whistled back an affirmative after a moment of consulting its brethren through whatever connection they shared. He dared not chance the Castle deciding to needle their volcanically-tempered guest again. Bowing to both brother and wife, he took leave of them as they began court together before the lords and ladies of Dorne as a united house. This was their hour, not his. Besides, he could read the transcripts later from the many devices that could spy upon the courtiers of their true reactions after the spectacle.   
  
The Spear Tower was for both guests and "guests". Its apartments could serve both as chambers for honored visitors and tower cells for honored prisoners. The closer to the top was usually considered a sign of the Prince of Dorne's displeasure. The very top was usually where prisoners were tossed out the windows for some capital crime or another. Oberyn brought Tygett to richly-appointed chambers a third of the way up. The window facing the sea was wide enough to admit Agatha's little helpers as they flew chests into the rooms. The contents were laid out of the bed: finely-tailored outfits in Lannister colors in Dornish fashion that the Yurt staff had been busy making all evening.   
  
Tygett stopped before a silvered glass. He studied himself in tribute's garb for a fair few minutes before almost reluctantly taking it off. Oberyn lounged upon a couch in one corner as the Lannister attired himself in breeches and doublet. His interest in an arse that was as sculpted as the cliffs of the Rock was entirely intellectual. Tygett walked over to a rack set with a selection of blades, spears, and other knightly weapons. He tested the cut of a few dynesteel blades before belting one and a dagger at his waist. He absently fingered a mail byrnie as servants placed a platter with a red from Sunspear's own vineyards and sliced blood-oranges upon it.  
  
"We will send one of the Castle's armorers to consult you as to plate," Oberyn said. "We already have your measurements. No doubt you wish embellishments to suit your tastes."  
  
"Plain, burnished harness will do for me." Tygett popped a slice of orange and washed it down with the wine. "It's my brother that prances about in that red monstrosity and tablecloth of a cape."  
  
"Done, then. It will be brought to you by sunset." Oberyn leaned back. "You do realize you are taking those oaths."  
  
"Aye. Always knew one day that we'd be marching against Aerys," Tygett said. "Nearly had him at Duskendale until Barristan ruined all."  
  
"We managed matters better when we killed Daeron at Viserys' orders." Oberyn smirked. "What, you think even we Dornish would murder a king at a parley without assurances beforehand?"  
  
"Then why did you not work in the shadows with my brother?"  
  
"Because we will not have Elia threatened." Oberyn's easy grin vanished. "We know quite well how he treats women who have defied him. That trick Aerys meant to subject her to was inspired by your brother."  
  
"That inbred fool ever lives in Tywin's shadow." Tygett raised a brow. "So how are you dealing with him?"  
  
Oberyn told him.  
  
"So, the Iron Throne will be distracted soon," Oberyn continued, over Tygett's laughter. "I had a thought that she might be wed closer to Dorne. The Starry Sept, perhaps. Or Highgarden."  
  
"Having the reachlords pay for the ceremony." Tygett snickered. "Mace is an able lord in peace. I vow he has not the gravel to defy both your lady and my brother."  
  
"Oh, he will not be paying all." Oberyn narrowed his eyes. "The House of Heterodyne is in need of funds. Much of what was looted on her campaign against the slavers is meant to rebuild what she had to destroy."  
  
"How much?" Tygett sounded bored.  
  
"A gift of forty million dragons will do," Oberyn said.  
  
"Done. My brother was willing to throw one hundred at her and half the maids of Lannisport too," Tygett shrugged.  
  
Oberyn stared.  
  
"Don't get me wrong, that will dent our purses somewhat." Tygett sucked another orange slice dry. "It will take the mines a fair few years to replenish it."  
  
Oberyn still stared.  
  
"What? We're really fucking rich, you know."


End file.
